
& 



MR* 



ORTHODOXY: 



A LECTURE 



BY 



Robert G. Ingersoll. 



The clergy know that I know that they know that they do 
lot know. R. G. Ingersoll. 



ONLY AUTHORIZED EDITION. 



WASHINGTON, D. C: 

1884. 



'RESS, S'ND Wt1_L BE PUBLISHED APHH I7«* y.i 



^Ooltazre's T^omances. 

Translated from the French. 



A New Edition, with Numerous Illustrations. 





I choose that a story should be founded on probability, and not always resemble a dream. 
I desire to find nothing in it trivial or extravagant ; and I desire above all, that under 
the appearance of fable there may appear some latent truth, obvious to the discerning 
eye, though it escape the observation of the vulgar.— Voltaire. 

Handsome 12 mo, 448 pages, laid paper. With 67 Engravings. Price, Cloth, beveled boards, $2.00. 
Half Calf or Half Morocco, marbled edges, ■ $4.00. 



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CONTENTS. 



THE WHITE BULL: A SATIRICAL ROMANCE. 



CHAPTFR PAGE 

i. How the Princess Amasidia meets 

a hull, I 

How the wise Mamhres, formerly 
magician of Pharoah, knew again 
the old woman, and was known 
by her, ... 4 

How the beautiful Amasidia had a 
secret conversation with a heauti- 

ful serpent 8 

iv. How they wanted to sacrifice the 

hull and exorcise the Princess 13 

V. How the wise Mambres conducted 

himself wisely 16 

How Mambres met three prophets, 
and gave them a goad dinner 21 



11. 



in. 



VI. 



11. How king Amasis wanted to give 
the White Bull to be devoured by 
the fish of Jonah, and did not do it 24 

11. How the serpent told stories to the 

Princess to comfort her - 25 

x. How the serpent did not comfort the 

Princess ----- 26 

x. How they wanted to behead the 

Princess, and did not do it - 30 

u. Apotheosis of the White Bull. 
Triumph of the wise Mambres. 
The seven years proclaimed by 
Daniel are accomplished. Nebu- 
chadnezzer resumes the human 
form, and marries Amasidia - 



ZADIG; OR FATE. 



Approbation 36 

Epistle dedicatory to the Sultana Sheraa 36 

1. The Blind of one Eye 37 

11. The Nose ----- 40 

in. The Dog and the Horse - - 42 

iv. The Envious Man - - - 46 

v. The Generous - - - - 50 

vi. The Minister - 52 

vii. The Disputes and the Audiences 54 

viii. Jealousy ----- 56 

ix. The Woman Beater - - - 60 

THE SAGE AND 

105 



xv. 

XVI. 

XVII. 

XVIII. 

XIX. 



x. Slavery 

ci. The Funeral Pile 

11. The Supper 

11. The Rendezvous 

iv. The Robber 

The Fisherman 

The Basilisk 

The Combats 

The Hermit 

The Enigmas 



32 



63 
67 
69 
73 
75 
79 
82 
89 
93 
100 



Introduction 



Adventures of Johnny, a young Eng- 
lishman, by Donna Las Nalgas 106 

Continuation of the adventures of 
John, also those of his worthy 
father, D. D., M. P., and F. R. S. 108 

Controversy of the " Buts," between 
Mr. Freind and Don Inigo y-Med- 
roso, y-Comodios, y-Papalamien- 
dos, Bachelor of Salamanca - 111 

THE PRINCESS 
Royal contest for the hand of For- 
mosanta ------ 

The King of Babylon convenes his 



THE ATHEIST. 

iv. John returns to London and is led 

into bad company - 117 

v. They want to get John married - 120 

vi. A terrible adventure - - 123 

vii. What happened in America - 126 

vm. Dialogue between Freind and Birton 

on Atheism - - ' - - 133 
ix. On Atheism ... - 138 



x. On Atheism 



146 



xi. Return to England — John's marriage 152 



Council and consults the Oracle 
in. Royal festival in honor of the kingly- 
visitors. The bird converses elo- 
quently with Formosanta 
iv. The beautiful bird is killed. For- 
mosanta begins a journey Aldea 
elopes with the King of "Scythia 



155 
16s 



187 
191 
195 



167 



OF BABYLON. 

v Formosanta visits China and Scythia 

in search of Amazan 
vi. The Princess continues herjourney 
vii. Amazan visits Albion 
vin. Amazan leaves Albion to visit the 

land of Saturn - - - - 196 
ix. Amazan visits Rome - - - 202 
x. An unfortunate adventure in Gaul 206 
xi. Amazan and Formosanta become 

reconciled ----- 212 



THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS. 



I. National Poverty - - - 223 

II. Disaster of the Man of Forty Crowns 225 
in. Conversation with a Geometrician 227 
iv. An adventure with a Carmelite - 239 

v. Audience of the Comptroller General 241 
vi. The Man of Forty Crowns marries 243 

THE HURON; OR, 
1. The Huron arrives in France - 267 
11. The Huron, called the Ingenu, ac- 
knowledged by his relatives - 273 
in. The Huron converted - - 277 

iv. The Huron baptized - - - 280 
v. The Huron in love - - - 2S2 
vi. The Huron flies to his mistress, 

and becomes quite furious - 285 



vii. On taxes paid to a foreign power 248 

viii. On Proportions _.-'■-- 250 

ix." A great quarrel - 255 

x. A rascal repulsed - 257 

xi. The good sense of Mr. Andrew 258 

xii. The good supper at Mr. Andrew's 260 

PUPIL OF NATURE. 

vii. The Huron repulses the English 288 
vm. The Huron goes to Court. Sups 
upon the road with some Hugue- 
nots 290 

ix. The arrival of the Huron at Ver- 
sailles. His reception at Court 293 
x. The Huron is shut up in the Bastile 

with a Jansenist - - 296 



THE HURON; OR PUPIL OF NATURE. {Continued.) 



XVI 
XVII 
XVIII 



Miss St. Yves consults a Jesuit 
The Jesuit triumphs - 
Miss St. Yves delivers her lover 
and a Jansenist 
kix. The Huron, the beautiful Miss St. 
Yves, and their relatives, are 
convened - 

XX. The death of the beautiful Miss St. 
Yves and its consequences - 



PAGE 

314 
3i5 

3i7 



■CHAPTER ,. , , . . PAGE 

xi. How the Huron discloses his genius 301 

xii. The Huron's sentiments upon the- 
atrical pieces - 303 
belli. The beautiful Miss St. Yves goes 

to Versailles 305 

xiv. Rapid progress of the Huron's 

intellect ------ 309 

xv. The beautiful Miss St. Yves visits 

M. de St. Pouange - - 311 

MICROMEGAS. 
1. A voyage to Saturn, by a Sirian - 335 iv. What befell them upon this our globe 343 
11. A conversation between Micromegas v. The travelers capture a vessel - 346 

and an inhabitant of Saturn - 338 vi. What happened in their intercourse 
in. The voyage of these travelers - 341 with men 347 



320 



326 



THE WORLD AS IT GOES. - 357 

THE BLACK AND THE WHITE •- 375 
MEMNOM THE PHILOSOPHER 389 



ANDRE DES TOUCHES AT SIAM 
BABABEC 



395 
401 



THE STUDY OF NATURE, 



405 
407 



I. Introduction 

II. The study of Nature 
in. Good advice 



A CONVERSATION WITH A CHI- 
NESE ' 413 

PLATO'S DREAM - - - - 417 



iv. Dialogue upon the soul and other 

topics 409 



A PLEASURE IN HAVING NO 

PLEASURE 421 

AN ADVENTURE IN INDIA - 427 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Voltaire, after Bust by Houdon, Frontispiece. 

Voltaire at seventy years of age - iii 

Ancient Writing Implements, (Pompeii) iii 

Voltaire in early manhood - - xii 
The White Bull - - - xviii 

Apis ...---- 1 

Amasidia 2 

Silence 2 

The remarkable Witch of Endor - 5 

The Serpent 12 

Egyptian Priests .... 29 
Winged Bull ..... 31 
The Scape Goat .... 34 
Caravan approaching Babylon - 37 
Egyptian Archer - 66 
The Funeral Pvre - 68 
Oannes — The Fish God - 71 
Cador concealing Astarte in the Temple 84 
The Angel Jesrad - - - - 99 
Freind and his wayward Son - 105 
Don Jeronimo Bueno Caracucarador 106 
Dress., of a Man condemned by the In- 
quisition 108 

Grand Entrance to Palace, - - 154 

The Phoenix ----- 155 

The Shrine at Bassora - 166 

Helen on the Ramparts of Troy - 174 

Consulting the Oracle - 176 

Formosanta a prisoner to Egypt's King 177 

Religious Wars in Albion .- - 199 

The Old Man of the Seven Mountains 203 

Kissing an Old Man's Toe - - - 205 

Gaiety and Frivolity - 206 
The Preservers of Ancient Barbarous 

Customs 207 



PAGE 

Dancing a Tambourin - - - 212 

The Tax Collector - - - - 223 

Barefooted Carmelites - 239 

Entering the Convent - - - - 247 

The Rack 251 

The Priory Entrance - - - - 267 
The Confessional ... - 308 

Father Tout-a-tous - - - - 3H 
Death of Miss St. Yves - - - 329 

A Medieval Exploring Vessel - - 335 
A Theological Difficulty - - 35° 

The Blank Book 354 

The Spiritual Rulers of Persepolis - 357 
Burying the Dead in Churches - - 360 
The Scales of Justice ... 372 

Procession of Souls to Judgment - - 375 
The Parrot - 

Young Memnon - - - - - 

Memnon and the Distressed Ninevite 

The Talapolins - 

Des Touches and Croutef 

Boodh supported by Serpents 

The Fakir ------ 

The Sphinx ------ 

The Study of Nature - 

The Poor Clergyman - - - - 

Kwan-yin, Burmese Buddha, etc. 
The Birth of Minerva and Eve— Androgy- 
nous Deities - 
Bacchus and Ariadne - 
Envy ------- 

Plato 

Visiting Seignior Pococurante 
The " Yawning Oysters " 
Indians condemned to be Burned 



389 
390 
395 
395 
401 
402 
404 
405 
408 
413 

416 
417 
418 
420 
421 
427 
430 



A RARE BOOK REPRODUCED 



Voltaire's Romances 

Translated from the French, 
A New Edition. Complete in One Volume. 

With Numerous Illustrations. 

INCLUDING THREE AUTHENTICATED PORTRAITS OF THE AUTHOR. 



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beautiful old style type, on fine laid paper, and with the bes 
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are altogether delightful, giving to them ^the aroma of attar and the 
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their keen satire and trenchant wit cutting like a Damascus blade 
deep into the foibles of society and follies of religious rites and super- 
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and defenders of the weak, innocent, and oppressed, will read and re-read 
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.07 



ORTHODOXY. 



It is utterly inconceivable that any man believing in the 
truth of the Christian religion should publicly deny it, 
because he who believes in that religion would believe that, 
by a public denial, he would peril the eternal salvation of 
his soul. It is conceivable, and without any great effort 
of the mind, that millions who do not believe in the Chrisi ian 
religion should openly say that they did. In a country 
where religion is supposed to be in power — where it has 
rewards for pretense, where it pays a premium upon hypo- 
crisy, where it at least is willing to purchase silence — it is 
easily conceivable that millions pretend to believe what 
they do jiot. And yet I believe it has been charged against 
myself not only that I was insincere, but that I took the 
side I am on for the sake of popularity ; and the audience 
to-night goes far towards justifying the accusation. 

Orthodox Religion Dying Out. 

It gives me immense pleasure to say to this audience 
that orthodox religion is dying out of the civilized world. 
It is a sick man. It has been attacked with two diseases — 
softening of the brain and ossification of the heart. It is a 
religion that no longer satisfies the intelligence of this coun- 
try ; that no longer satisfies the brain ; a religion against 
which the heart of every civilized man and woman pro- 
tests. It is a religion that giv.es hope only to a few ; that 
puts a shadow upon the cradle; that wraps the coffin in 
darkness and fills the future of mankind with flame and 
fear. It is a religion that I am going to do what little I 
can while I live to destroy. In its place I want humanity, 
I want good-fellowship, I want intellectual liberty — free 
lips, the discoveries and inventions of genius, the demon- 



4 ORTHODOXY. 

strations of science — the religion of art, music and poetry — - 
of good houses, good clothes, good wages — that is to say r 
the religion of this world. 

Religious Deaths and Births. 

"We must remember that this is a world of progress, a 
world of perpetual change — a succession of coffins and cra- 
dles. There is perpetual death, and there is perpetual birth. 
By the grave of the old, forever stand youth and joy ; and 
when an old religion dies, a better one is born. When we 
find out that an assertion is a falsehood a shining truth takes 
its place, and we need not fear the destruction of the false. 
The more false we destroy the more room there will be for 
the true. 

There was a time when the astrologer sought to read in 
the stars the fate of men and nations. The astrologer has 
faded from the world, but the astronomer has taken his 
place. There was a time when the poor alchemist, bent 
and wrinkled and old, over his crucible endeavored to find 
some secret by which he could change the baser metals into 
purest gold. The alchemist has gone; the chemist took 
his place ; and, although he finds nothing to change metals 
into gold, he finds something that covers the earth with 
wealth. There was a time when the soothsayer and augur 
flourished. After them came the parson and the priest ; 
and the parson and the priest must go. The preacher must 
go, and in his place must come the teacher — the real inter- 
preter of Nature. We are done with the supernatural. 
We are through with the miraculous and the impossible. 
There was once the prophet who pretended to read the 
book of the future. His place has been taken by the phil- 
osopher, who reasons from cause to effect — who finds the 
facts by which we are surrounded and endeavors to reason 
from these premises and to tell what in all probability will 
happen. The prophet has gone, the philosopher is here. 
There was a time when man sought aid from Heaven — 
when he prayed to the deaf sky. There was a time when 
everything depended on the supernaturalist. That time in 
Christendom is passing away. We now depend upon the 



ORTHODOXY. 5 

naturalist— not upon the believer in ancient falsehoods, but 
on the discoverer of facts — on the demonstrator of truths. 
At last we are beginning to build on a solid foundation, and 
as we progress, the supernatural dies. The leaders of the 
intellectual world deny the existence of the supernatural. 
They take from all superstition its foundation. 

The Religion of Reciprocity. 

Supernatural religion will fade from this world, and in its 
place we shall have reason. In the place of the worship of 
something we know not of, will be the religion of mutual 
love and- assistance — the great religion of reciprocity. Su- 
perstition must go. Science will remain. The church dies 
hard. The brain of the world is not yet developed. There 
are intellectual diseases as well as physical — there are pesti- 
lences and plagues of the mind. 

Whenever the new comes the old protests, and fights for 
its place as long as it has a particle of power. We are now 
having the same warfare between superstition and science 
that there was between the stage coach and the locomotive. 
But the stage coach had to go. It had its day of glory and 
power, but it is gone. It went West. In a little while it 
will be driven into the Pacific. So we find that there is the 
same conflict between the different sects and different schools 
not only of philosophy but of medicine. 

Kecollect that everything except the demonstrated truth 
is liable to die. That is the order of Nature. Words die. 
Every language has a cemetery. Every now and then a 
word dies and a tombstone is erected, and across it is written 
" obsolete." New words are continually being born. There 
is a cradle in which a word is rocked. A thought is mar- 
ried to a sound, and a child- word is born. And there comes 
a time when the word gets old, and wrinkled, and expres- 
sionless, and is carried mournfully to the grave. So in the 
schools of medicine. You can remember, so can I, when 
the old allopathists, the bleeders and blisterers, reigned su- 
preme. If there was anything the matter with a man they 
let out his blood. Called to the bed-side, they took him on 
the poin^of a lancet to the edge of eternity, and then prac- 



6 ORTHODOXY. 

ticed all their art to bring him back. One can hardly imagine 
how perfect a constitution it took a few years ago to stand 
the assault of a doctor. And long after the old practice was 
found to be a mistake, hundreds and thousands of the ancient 
physicians clung to it, carried around with them, in one 
pocket a bottle of jalap, and in the other a rusty lancet, sorry 
that they could not find some patient with faith enough to 
allow the experiment to be made again. 

So these schools, and these theories, and these religions 
diehard. What else can they do? Like the paintings of 
the old masters, they are kept alive because so much money 
has been invested in them. Think of the amount of money 
that has. been invested in superstition ! Think of the schools 
that have been founded for the more general diffusion of 
useless_knowledge ! Think of the colleges wherein men are 
taught that it is dangerous to think, and that they must 
never use their brains except in the act of faith ! Think of 
the millions and billions of dollars that have been expended 
in churches, in temples, and in cathedrals ! Think of the 
thousands and thousands of men who depend for their liv- 
ing upon the ignorance of mankind ! Think of those who 
grow rich on credu lity and who fatten on |aith ! Do you 
suppose they are going to die without a struggle ? What 
are they to do? From the bottom of my heart I sympa- 
thize with the poor clegyman that has had all his common 
sense educated out of him, and is now to be thrown upon 
the cold and unbelieving world. His prayers are not an- 
swered; he gets no help from on high, and the pews are 
beginning to criticise the pulpit. What is the man to do ? 
If he suddenly changes he is gone. If he preaches what he 
really believes he will get notice to quit. And yet if he and 
the congregation would come together and be perfectly 
honest they would all admit that they beheye^Jittle and 
know n othin g. 

Only a little while ago a couple of ladies were riding to- 
gether from a revival, late at night, and one said to the 
other, as they rode along: "I am going to say something 
that will shock you, and I beg of you never to tell it to any- 
body else. I am going to tell it to you." " Well, what is 



ORTHODOXY. 7 

it?" Said she: " I do not believe the Bible." The other 
replied : " Neither do I." 

I have often thought how splendid it would be if the 
ministers could but come together and say : " Now let us be 
honest. Let us tell each other, honor bright" — like Dr. Curry, 
of Chicago, did in the meeting the other day — "just what we 
believe." They tell a story that in the old time a lot of 
people, about twenty, were in Texas in a little hotel, and one 
fellow got up before the fire, put his hands behind him, and 
said : " Boys, let us all tell our real names." If the minis- 
ters and their congregations would only tell their real 
thoughts they would, find that they are nearly as bad as I 
am, and that they believe as little. 

Orthodoxy dies hard, and its defenders, tell us that this 
fact shows that it is of divine origin. Judaism dies hard. 
It has lived several thousand years longer than Christian- 
ity. . The religion of Mohammed . dies hard. Buddhism 
dies hard. Why do all these religions die hard ? Because 
intelligence increases slowly. 

Let me whisper in the ear of the Protestant : Catholicism 
dies hard. What does that prove? It proves that the 
people are ignorant and that the priests are cunning. 

Let me whisper in the ear of the Catholic : Protestantism 
dies hard. What does that prove? It proves that the 
people are superstitious and the preachers stupid. 

Let me whisper in all your ears : Infidelity is not dying — 
it is growing — it increases every day. And what does 
that prove ? It proves that the people are learning more 
and more — that they are advancing — that the mind is get- 
ting free, and that the race is being civilized. 

The clergy know that I know that they know that they 
do not know. 



8 ORTHODOXY. 

The Blows that have shattered the Shield and 
shivered the Lance of Superstition. 



Mohammed. 

Mohammed wrested from the disciples of the Cross the 
fairest part of Europe. It was known that he was an im- 
postor, and that fact sowed the seeds of distrust and infidelity 
in the Christian world. Christians made an effort to rescue 
from the infidels the empty sepulchre of Christ. That com- 
menced in the eleventh century and ended at the close of 
the thirteenth. Europe was almost depopulated. The fields . 
were left waste, the villages were deserted, nations were im- 
poverished, every man who owed a debt was discharged 
from payment if he put a cross upon his breast and joined 
the Crusades. No matter what crime he had committed, 
the doors of the prison were open for him to join the hosts 
of the Cross. They believed that God would give them vic- 
tory, and they carried in front of the first Crusade a goat 
and a .goose, believing that both those animals were blessed 
by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. And I may say that 
those same animals are in the lead to-day in the orthodox 
world. Until 1291 they endeavored to gain possession of 
that sepulchre, and finally the hosts of Christ were driven 
back baffled and beaten, — a poor, miserable, religious rab- 
ble. They were driven back, and that fact sowed the seeds 
of distrust in Christendom. You know that at that time the 
world believed in trial by battle — that God would take the 
side of the right — and there had been a trial by battle be- 
tween the cross and the crescent, and Mohammed had been 
victorious. "Was God at that time governing the world? 
Was he endeavoring to spread his gospel ? 

The Destruction of Art. 

You know that when Christianity came into power it de- 
stroyed every statute it could lay its ignorant hands upon. 
It defaced and obliterated every painting ; it destroyed every 
beautiful building ; it burned the manuscripts, both Greek 
and Latin ; it destroyed all the history, all the poetry, all the 



ORTHODOXY. 9 

philosophy it could find, and reduced to ashes every library 
that it could reach with its torch. And the result was, that 
the night of the Middle Ages fell upon the human race. 
But b}^ accident, by chance, by oversight, a few of the man- 
uscripts escaped the fury of religious zeal; and these manu- 
scripts became the seed, the fruit of which is our civilization 
of to-day. A few statues had been buried ; a few forms of 
beauty were dug from the earth that had protected them, 
and now the civilized world is filled with art, the walls are 
covered with paintings, and the niches filled with statuary. 
A few manuscripts were found and deciphered. The old 
languages were learned, and literature was again born. A 
new day dawned upon mankind. Every effort at mental 
improvement had been opposed by the church, and yet, the 
few things saved from the general wreck — a few poems, a 
few works of the ancient thinkers, a few forms wrought in 
stone, produced a new civilization destined to overthrow and 
destroy the fabric of superstition. 

The Discovery of America. 

What was the next blow that this church received? The 
discovery of America. The IJd^Glhost who inspired men 
to write the Bible did not know of the existence of this Con- 
tinent, never dreamed of the Western Hemisphere. The 
Bible left out half the world. The Holy Ghost did not know 
that the earth is round. He did not dream that the earth is 
round. He believed it was flat, although he made it himself. 
At that time heaven was just beyond the clouds. It was there 
the gods lived, there the angels were, and it was against that 
heaven that Jacob's ladder leaned when the angels went up 
and down. It was to that heaven that Christ ascended after 
his resurrection. It was up there that the New Jerusalem 
was, with its streets of gold, and under this earth was perdi- 
tion. There was where the devils lived ; where a pit was dug 
for all unbelievers, and for men who had brains. I say that 
for this reason: Just in proprotion that you have brains, 
your chances for eternal joy are lessened, according to this 
religion. And just in proportion that you lack brains your 
chances are increased. At last they found that the earth is 



10 ORTHODOXY. 

round. It was circumnavigated by Magellan. In 1519 
that brave man set sail. The church told him: " The earth 
is flat, my friend; don't go, you may fall off the edge." 
Magellan said : " I have seen the shadow of the earth upon 
the moon, and I have more confidence in the shadow than 
I have in the church." The ship went round. The earth 
was circumnavigated. Science passed its hand above it and 
beneath it, and where was the old heaven and where was the 
hell? Vanished forever ! And they dwell now only in the 
religion of superstition. We found there was no place there for 
Jacob's ladder to lean against ; no place there for the gods 
and angels to live ; no place to hold the waters of the deluge ; 
no place to which Christ could have ascended. The found- 
ations of the new Jerusalem crumbled. The towers and 
domes fell, and in their places infinite space, sown with an 
infinite number of stars ; not with new Jerusalems, but with 
countless constellations. 

Copernicus and Kepler. 

Then man began to grow great, and with that came as- 
tronomy. In 1473 Copernicus was born. In 1543 his great 
work appeared. In 1616 the sytem of Copernicus was com. 
demned by theJSope, by the infallible Catholic Church, and 
the church was about as near~right upon that subject as 
upon any other. The system of Copernicus was denounced. 
And how long do you suppose the church fought that? Let 
me tell you. It was revoked by Pius VII. in the year of 
grace 1821. For 278 years after the death of Copernicus 
the church insisted that his system was false, and that the old 
bible astronomy was true. Astronomy is the first help that 
we ever received from heaven. Then came Kepler in 1609, 
and you may almost date the birth of science from the night 
that Kepler discovered his first law. That was the break 
of the day. His first law, that the planets do not move 
in circles but in ellipses ; his second law, that they describe 
equal spaces in equal times ; his third law, that the squares 
ot their periodic times are proportional to the cubes ot their 
distances. That man gave us the key to the heavens. He 
opened the infinite book, and in it read three lines. 

I have not time to speak of Galileo, of Leonardo da Vinci, 



ORTHODOXY. 11 

of Bruno, and of hundreds of others who contributed to the 
intellectual wealth of the* world. 

Special Providence. 

The next thing that gave the church a blow was Statistics. 
We found bj taking statistics that we could tell the average 
length of human life ; that this human life did not depend 
upon infinite caprice ; that it depended upon conditions, cir- 
cumstances, laws and facts, and that these conditions, cir- 
cumstances, and facts were during long periods of time sub- 
stantially the same. And now, the man who depends entirely 
upon special providence gets his life insured. He has more- 
confidence even in one of these companies than he has in the 
whole Trinity. We found by statistics that there were just 
so many crimes on an average committed; just so many 
crimes of one kind and so many of another ; just so many 
suicides, so many deaths by drowning, so many accidents on 
an average, so many men marrying women, for instance, 
older than themselves ; so many murders of a particular 
kind ; just the same number of mistakes ; and I say to- 
night, statistics utterly demolish the idea of special Provi- 
dence. 

Only the other day a gentleman was telling me of a case 
of special Providence. He knew it. He had been the sub- 
ject of it. A few years ago he was about to go on a ship, 
when he was detained. He did not go, and the ship was lost 
with all on board. " Yes I" I said, " Do you think the people 
who were drowned believed in special Providence?" Think 
of the infinite egotism of such a doctrine. Here is a man 
that fails to go upon a ship with 500 passengers, and they 
go down to the bottom of the sea — fathers, mothers, children, 
and loving husbands and wives waiting upon the shores of 
expectation. Here is one poor little wretch that did not 
happen to go! And he thinks that God, the Infinite Being, 
interfered in his poor little withered behalf and let the rest 
all go. That is special Providence ! Why does special 
Providence allow all the crimes ? Why are the wife-beaters 
protected, and why are the wives and children left defence- 
less if the hand of (rod is over us all? Who protects the 
insane? Why does Providence j^gruoit insanity? But the 
church cannot give up special Providence. If there is no 



12 ORTHODOXY. 

such thing, then no pra}^ers, no worship, no churches, no 
priests. What would become of National Thanksgiving? 
You know we have a custom every year of issuing a proc- 
lamation of thanksgiving. We say to God, " Although you 
have afflicted all the other countries, although you have 
sent war, and desolation, and famine on everybody else, we 
have been such good children that you have been kind to 
us, and we hope you will keep on." It does not make a bit 
of difference whether we have good times or not — the thanks- 
giving is always exactly the same. I remember a few yeais 
ago a Governor of Iowa got out a proclamation of that kind. 
He went on to tell how thankful the people were and how 
prosperous the State had been. There was a young fellow 
in that State who got out another proclamation, saying 
that he feared the Lord might be misled by official corres- 
pondence ; that the Governor's proclamation was entirely 
false; that the State was not prosperous; that the crops had 
been an almost utter failure ; that nearly every farm in the 
State was mortgaged, and that if the Lord did not believe 
him, all he asked was that he would send some angel in 
whom he had confidence, to look the matter over and re- 
port. 

Charles Darwin. 

This century will be called Darwin's century. He was 
one of the greatest men who ever touched this globe. He 
has explained more of the phenomena of life than all of 
the religious teachers. Write the name of Charles Dar- 
win on the one hand and the name of every theologian 
who ever lived on the other, and from that name has 
come more light to the world than from all of those. 
His doctrine of evolution, his doctrine of the survival 
of the fittest, his doctrine of the origin of species, has 
removed in every thinking mind the last vestige of 
orthodox Christianity. He has not only stated, but he 
has demonstrated, that the inspired writer knew nothing of 
this world, nothing of the origin of man, nothing of geology, 
nothing of astronomy, nothing of nature ; that the bible is a 
book written by ignorance — at the instigation of Jear. 
Think of the men who replied to him. Only a few years 



ORTHODOXY. 13 

ago there was no person too ignorant to successfully answer 
Charles Darwin ; and the more ignorant he was the more 
cheerfully he undertook the task. He was held up to the 
ridicule, the scorn and contempt of the Christian world, and 
yet when he died, England was proud to put his dust with 
that of her noblest and her grandest. Charles Darwin con- 
quered the intellectual world, and his doctrines are now 
accepted facts. His light has broken in on some of the clergy, 
and the greatest man who to-day occupies the pulpit of one 
of the orthodox churches, Henry Ward Beecher, is a be- 
liever in the theories of Charles Darwin — a man of more 
genius than all the clergy of that entire church put together. 
And yet we are told in this little creed that orthodox re- 
ligion is about to conquer the world ! It will be driven to 
the wilds of Africa. It must go to some savage country ; it 
has lost its hold upon civilization. It is unfortunate to have. 
a religion that cannot be accepted by the intellect of a nation 
It is unfortunate to have a religion against which every good 
and noble heart protests. Let us have a good religion or 
none. My pity has been excited by seeing these ministers 
endeavor to warp and twist the passages of Scripture to fit 
the demonstrations of science. Of course I have not time to 
recount all the discoveries and events that have assisted in the 
destruction of superstition. Every fact is an enemy of the 
Church. Every fact is a heretic. Every demonstration is 
an infidel. Everything that ever really happened testifies 
against the supernatural. 

The church teaches that man was created perfect, and 
that for six thousand years he has degenerated. Darwin 
demonstrated the falsity of this dogma. He shows that 
man has for thousands of ages steadily advanced ; that the 
Garden of Eden is an ignorant myth ; that the doctrine of 
original sin has no foundation in fact ; that the atonement 
is an absurdity ; that the serpent did not tempt, and that 
man did not "fall." 

Charles Darwin destroyed the foundation of orthodox 
Christianity. There is nothing left but faith in what we 
know could not and did not happen. Religion and science 
are enemies. One is a superstition ; the other is a fact. 



14 ORTHODOXY. 

One rests upon the false, the other upon the true. One is 
the result of fear and faith, the other of investigation and 
reason. 

The Creeds. 

I have been talking a great deal about the orthodox re- 
ligion. Often, after having delivered a lecture, I have met 
some good, religious person who has said to me : " You do 
not tell it as we believe it." " Well, but I tell it as you 
have it written in your creed." " Oh, we don't mind the 
creed any more." "Then, why do you not change it?" 
" Oh, well, we understand it as it is, and if we tried to change 
it, maybe we would not agree." Possibly the creeds are -in 
the best condition now. There is a tacit understanding that 
they do not believe them, that there is a way to get around 
them, and that they can read between the lines ; that if they 
should meet now to form new creeds they would fail to agree ; 
and that now they can say as they please, except in public. 
Whenever they do so in public the church, in self-defense, 
must try them ; and I believe in trying every minister that 
does not preach the doctrine he agrees to. I have not the 
slightest sympathy with a Presbyterian preacher who en- 
deavors to preach infidelity from a Presbyterian pulpit and 
receives Presbyterian money. When he changes his views 
he should step down and out like a man, and say, " I do not 
believe your doctrine, and I will not preach it. You must 
hire some other man." 



The Latest Creed. 

But I find that I have correctly interpreted the creeds. 
There was put into my hands the new Congregational 
creed. I have read it, and I will call your attention to it 
to-night, to find whether that church has made any ad- 
vance ; to find whether it has been affected by the light of 
science; to find whether the sun of science has risen in the 
heavens in vain ; whether they are still the children of in- 
tellectual darkness; whether they still consider it necessary 
for you to believe something that you by no possibility can 



ORTHODOXY. 15 

understand, in order to be a winged angel forever. Now, 
let us see what their creed is. I will read a little of it. 

They commence by saying that they : 

" Believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven 
and earth, and of all things visible and invisible." 

They say, now, that there is the one personal God ; that 
he is the maker of the universe and its ruler. I again ask 
the old question, Of what did he make it ? If matter has 
not existed through eternity, then this God made it. Of 
what did he make it ? What did he use for the purpose ? 
There was nothing in the universe except this Gocl. What 
had the God been doing for the eternity he had been living ? 
He had made nothing — called nothing into existence ; never 
had had an idea, because it is impossible to have an idea 
unless there is something to excite an idea. What had he 
been doing ? Why does not the Congregational Church tell 
us? How do they know about this Infinite Being ? And if 
he is infinite how can they comprehend him ? What good 
is it to believe in something that you know you do not 
understand, and that you never can understand ? 

In the Episcopalian creed God is described as follows : 

" There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without 
body, parts, or passions.'''' 

Think of that! — without body, parts, or passions. I 
defy any man in the world to write a better description of 
nothing. You cannot conceive of a finer word-painting of 
a vacuum than "without body, parts, or passions." And yet 
this God, without passions, is angry at the wicked every day; 
this God, without passions, is a jealous God, whose anger 
burnetii to the lowest hell. This God, without passions, 
loves the whole human race ; and this God, without passions 
damns a large majority of mankind. This God, without 
body, walked in the garden of Eden, in the cool of the day. 

This God, without body, talked with Adam and Eve. This 
God, without body, or parts, met Moses upon Mount Sinai, 
appeared at the door of the tabernacle, and talked with Moses 
face to face as a man speaketh to his friend. This description 
of God is simply an effort of the church to describe a some- 
thing of which it has no conception. 



16 • ORTHODOXY. 

God as a Governor. 

So too, I find the following : 

11 We believe that the Providence of God, by which he exe- 
cutes his eternal purposes in the government of the world, is 
in and over all events. 11 

Is God the governor of the world? Is -this established by 
the history of nations? What evidence can you find, if you 
are absolutely honest and not frightened, in the history of 
the world, that this universe is presided over by an infinitely 
wise and good God? 

How do you account for Kussia? How do you account 
for Siberia ? How do you account for the fact that whole 
races of men toiled beneath the master's lash for ages with- 
out recompense and without reward ? How do you account 
for the fact that babes were sold from the arms of mothers 
— arms that had been reached toward God in supplication? 
How do you account for it ? How do you account for the 
existence of martyrs ? How do you account for the fact that 
this God allows people to be burned simply for loving him ? 
Is justice always done? Is innocence always acquitted? Do 
the good succeed ? Are the honest fed ? Are the charitable 
clothed? Are the virtuous shielded ? How do you account 
for the fact that the world has been filled with pain, and 
grief, and tears ? How do you account for the fact that peo- 
ple have been swallowed by earthquakes, overwhelmned by 
volcanoes, and swept from the earth by storms ? Is it easy 
to account for famine, for pestilence and plague if there be 
above us all a Ruler infinitely good, powerful and wise ? 

I do not say there is none. I do not know. As I have 
said before, this is the only planet I was ever on. I live in 
one of the rural districts of the universe, and do not know 
about these things as much as the clergy pretend to, but if 
they know no more about the other world than they do 
about this, it is not worth mentioning. 

How do they answer all this? They say that God "per- 
mits" it. What would you say to me if I stood by and saw 
a ruffian beat out the brains of a child when I had full and 
perfect power to prevent it ? You would say truthfully 
that I was as bad as the murderer. Is it possible for this 



ORTHODOXY. 17 

God to prevent it ? Then, if he does not he is a jiend ; he 
is no god. But they say he "permits 1 ' it. What for? So 
that we may have freedom of choice. What for? So that 
God may find, I suppose, who are good and who are bad. 
Did he not know that when he made us ? Did he hot know 
exactly just what he was making? Why should he make 
those whom he knew would be criminals ? If I should make 
a machine that would walk your streets and take the lives 
of people you would hang me. And if God made a man 
whom he knew would commit murder, then God is guilty 
of that murder. If God made a man knowing that he would 
beat his wife, that he would starve his children, that he 
would strew on either side of his path of life the wrecks of 
ruined homes, then I say the being who knowingly called 
that wretch into existence is directly responsible. And yet 
we are to find the Providence of God in the history of na- 
tions. What little I have read shows me that when man 
has been helped, man has done it; when the chains of slavery 
have been broken, they have been broken by man ; when 
something bad has been done in the government of mankind, 
it is easy to trace it to man, and to fix the responsibility 
upon human beings. You need not look to the sky ; you 
need throw neither praise nor blame upon gods; you can 
find the efficient causes nearer home — right here. 

The Love of God. 

What is the next thing I find in this creed ? 
" We believe that man was made in the image of God, that 
he might know, love, and obey God, and enjoy him forever J 1 

I do not believe that anybody ever did love God, because 
nobody ever knew anything about him. We love each 
other. We love something that we know. We love some- 
thing that our experience tells us is good and great and 
beautiful. We cannot by any possibility love the unknown. 
We can love truth, because truth adds to human happiness. 
We can love justice, because it preserves human joy. We 
can love charity. We can love every form of goodness that 
we know, or of which we can conceive, but we cannot love 
2 



18 ORTHODOXY. 

the infinitely unknown. And how can we be made in the 
image of something that has neither body, parts, nor 
passions ? 

The Fall of Man. 

The Congregational Church has not outgrown the doc- 
trine of "original sin." We are told that: 

"Our first parents, by disobedience, fell under the condem- 
nation of God, and that all men are so alienated from God 
that there is no salvation from the guilt and power of sin ex- 
cept through God's redeeming power." 

Is there an intelligent man or woman now in the world 
who believes in the Garden of Eden story ? If you find 
any man who believes it, strike his forehead and you will 
hear an echo. Something is for rent. Does any intelligent 
man now believe that God made man of dust, and woman 
of a rib, and put them in a garden, and put a tree iii the 
midst of it? Was there not room outside of the garden to 
put his tree, if he did not want people to eat his apples? 

If I did not want a man to eat my fruit, I would not put 
him in my orchard. 

Does anybody now believe in the story of the serpent? 
I pity any man or woman who, in this nineteenth century, 
believes in that childish fable. Why did Adam and Eve 
disobey? Why, they were tempted. By whom? The 
devil. Who made the devil? What did God make him 
for? WTry~did he not tell Adam and Eve about this" ser^- 
pent? Why did he not watch the devil, instead of watch- 
ing Adam and Eve ? Instead of turning them out, why 
did he not keep him from getting in? Why did be not 
have his flood first, and drown the devil, before he made a 
man and woman ? 

And yet, people who call themselves intelligent — profes- 
sors in colleges and presidents of venerable institutions — 
teach children and young men that the Garden of Eden 
story is an absolute historical "fact. I defy any man to 
think of a more childish thing. This God, waiting around 
Eden — knowing all the while what would happen — having 
made them on purpose so that it would happen, then does 



ORTHODOXY. 19 

what? Holds all of us responsible, and we were not there! 
Here is a representative before the constituency had been 
born. Before I am bound by a representative I want a 
chance to vote for or against him; and if I had been there, 
and known all the circumstances, I should have voted 
"No!'' And yet, I am held responsible. 

We are told by the Bible and by the churches that 
through this fall of man 

11 Sin and death entered the world." 

According to this, just as soon as Adam and Eve had 
partaken of the forbidden fruit, God began to contrive ways 
by which be could destroy the lives of his children. He 
invented all the diseases- — all the fevers and coughs and 
colds — all the pains and plagues and pestilences — all the 
aches and agonies, the malaria and spores; so that when 
we take a breath of air we admit into our lungs unseen as- 
sassins; and, fearing that some might live too long, even 
under such circumstances, God invented the earthquake and 
volcano, the cyclone and lightning, animalcules to infest 
the heart and brain, so small that no eye can detect — no 
instrument reach. This was all owing to the disobedience 
of Adam and Eve ! 

In his infinite goodness, God invented rheumatism and 
gout and dyspepsia, cancers, and neuralgia, and is still invent- 
ing new diseases. Not only this, but he decreed the pangs 
of mothers, and that by the gates of love and life should 
crouch the dragons of death and pain. Fearing that some 
might, by accident, live too long, he planted poisonous vines 
and herbs that looked like food. He caught the serpents he 
had made and gave them fangs and curious organs, ingen- 
iously devised to distil and deposit the deadly drop. He 
changed the nature of the beasts, that they might feed on 
human flesh. He cursed a world, and tainted every spring 
and source of joy. He poisoned every breath of air; cor- 
rupted even light, that it might bear disease on every ray; 
tainted every drop of blood in human veins; touched every 
nerve, that it might bear the double fruit of pain and joy ; 
decreed all accidents and mistakes that maim and hurt 
and kill, and set the snares of life-long grief, baited with 



20 ORTHODOXY. 

present pleasure, — with a moment's joy. Then and there he 
foreknew and foreordained all human tears. And yet all this 
is but the prelude, the introduction, to the infinite revenge 
of the good God. Increase and multiply all human griefs 
until the mind has reached imagination's farthest verge, then 
add eternity to time, and you may faintly tell, but never can 
conceive, the infinite horrors of this doctrine called " The 
Fall of Man." 

The Atonement. 

We are further told that : 

" All men are so alienated from God that there is no alle- 
viation from the guilt and power of sin, except through God's 
redeeming grace;' 1 ' 

And that: 

" We believe that the love of God to sinful man has found 
its highest expression in the redemptive work of his Son, who 
became man, uniting his divine nature with our human 
nature in one person; who was tempted like other men and 
yet without sin, and by his humiliation, his holy obedience, 
his sufferings, his death on the cross, and his resurrection, 
became a perfect Redeemer ; whose sacrifice of himself for the 
sins of the world declares the righteousness of God, and is 
the sole and sufficient ground of forgiveness and of reconcil- 
iation with htm" 

The absurdity of the doctrine known as "The Fall of 
Man," gave birth to that other absurdity known as " The 
Atonement." So that now it is insisted that, as we are 
rightfully charged with the sin of somebody else, we can 
rightfully be credited with the virtues of another. Let us 
leave out of our philosophy both these absurdities. Our 
creed will read a great deal better with both of them out, 
and will make far better sense. 

Now, in consequence of Adam's sin, everybody is alienated 
from God. How? Why? Oh, we are all depraved, you 
know; we all do wrong. Well, why? Is that because we 
are depraved? No. Why do we make so many mistakes? 
Because there is only one right way, and there is an almost 
infinite number of wrong ways ; and as long as we are not 



ORTHODOXY. 21 

perFect in our intellects we must make mistakes. "There is 
no darkness but ignorance," and alienation, as they call it, 
from God, is simply a lack of intellect. Why were we not 
given better brains? That may account for the alienation. 
The church teaches that every soul that finds its way to 
the shore of this world is against God — naturally hates God; 
that the little dimpled child in the cradle is simply a chunk 
of depravity. Everybody against God! It is a libel upon 
the human race ; it is a libel upon all the men who have 
worked for wife and child; upon all mothers who have 
suffered and labored, wept and worked; upon all 
the men who have died for their country ; upon all who 
have fought for human liberty. Leave out the history of 
religion and there is little left to prove the depravity of 
man. 

Everybody that comes is against God! Every soul, they 
think, is like the wrecked Irishman, who drifted to an un- 
known island, and as he climbed the shore saw a man 
and said to him, " Have you a Government here ?" The 
man replied " We have." " Well, said he, " I'm forninst 
it!" 

The church teaches us that such is the attitude of 
every soul in the universe of God. Ought a god to take any 
credit to himself for making depraved people? A god that 
cannot make a soul that is not totally depraved, I respect- 
fully suggest, should retire from the business. And if a god 
has made us, knowing that we are totally depraved, why 
should we go to the same being to be "born again? " 

The Second Birth. 

The church insists that we must be " born again," and 
that all who are not the subjects of this second birth are 
heirs of everlasting fire. Would it not have been much 
better to have made another Adam and Eve ? Would it not 
have been better to change Noah and his people, so that 
after that a second birth would not have been necessary ? 
Why not purify the fountain of all human life? Why 
allow the earth to be peopled with depraved and monstrous 



22 ORTHODOXY. 

beings, each one of whom must "be re-made, re-formed, and 
born again? 

And yet, even reformation is not enough. If the man 
who steals becomes perfectly honest, that is not enough 
if the man who hates his fellowman, changes and loves his 
fellowman, that is not enough; he must go through that 
mysterious thing called the second birth ; he must be born 
again. He must have faith; he must believe something 
that he does not understand, and experience what they call 
" conversion." According to the church, nothing so excites 
the wrath of God — nothing; so corrugates the brows of 
Jehovah with hatred — as a man relying on his own good 
works. He must admit that he ought to be damned, and 
that of the two he prefers it, before God will consent to save 
him. 

I met a man the other day, who said to me, " 1 am a 
Unitarian Umversalist." "What do you mean by that ?" 
I asked. " Well." said he, " this is what I mean : the Uni- 
tarian thinks he is too good to be damned, and the Uni- 
versalist thinks God is to good to damn him, and I believe 
them both." 

Is it possible that the sacrifice of a perfect being was ac- 
ceptable to God ? Will he accept the agony of innocence 
for the punishment of guilt ? Will he release Barabbas 
and crucify Christ? 

Inspiration. 

What is the next thing in this great creed ? 

" We believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testa- 
ments are the record of God's revelation of Himself in the 
work of redemption ; that they were written by men under the 
special guidance of the Holy Spirit; that they are able to 
make wise unto salvation ; and that they constitute an author- 
itative standard by which religious teaching and human con- 
duct are to be regulated and judged.'''' 

This is the creed of the Congregational Church ; that is, 
the result reached by a high-joint commission appointed to 
draw up a creed for their churches; and there we have the 
statement. that the Bible was written "by men under the 
special guidance of the Holy Spirit." 



ORTHODOXY. 23 

What part of the Bible ? All of it? All of it. And yet 
what is this Old Testament that was written by an infinitely 
good God ? The being who wrote it did not know the shape 
of the world he had made; knew nothing of human nature. 
He commands men to love him, as if one could love upon 
command. The same God upheld the institution of human 
slavery; and the church says that the Bible that upholds 
that institution was written by men under the guidance of 
the Holy Spirit. Then I disagree with the Holy Spirit. 

This church tells us that men under the guidance of the 
Holy Spirit upheld the institution of polygamy — I deny it; 
that under the guidance of the Holy Spirit these men up- 
held wars of extermination and conquest — I deny it ; that 
under the guidance of the Holy Spirit these men wrote that 
it was right for a man to destroy the life of his wife if she 
happened to differ with him on the subject of religion — I 
deny it. And yet that is the book now upheld in this 
creed of the Congregational Church. 

If the devil had written upon the subject of slavery, which 
side would he have taken ? Let every minister answer. If 
you knew the devil had written a work on human slavery, 
in your judgment would he uphold slavery, or denounce it? 
Would you regard it as any evidence that he ever wrote it, 
if it upheld slavery ? And yet, here you have a work up- 
holding slavery, and you say that it was written by an in- 
finitely good God! If the devil upheld polygamy, would 
you be surprised? If the devil wanted to kill men for dif- 
fering with him would you be astonished? If the devil 
told a man to kill his wife, would you be shocked ? And 
yet, you say, that is exactly what God did. If there be a 
God, then that creed is blasphemy. That creed is a libel 
upon him who sits on Heaven's throne. If there be a God, 
I ask him to write in the book in whichf my account is 
kept, that I denied these lies for him. 

I do not believe in a slave-holding God ; I do not wor- 
ship a polygamous Holy Ghost, nor a Son who threatens 
eternal pain ; I will not get upon my knees before any being 
who commands a husband to slay his wife because she ex- 
presses her honest thought. Suppose a book should be 
found old as the Old Testament in which slavery, polygamy 



24 ORTHODOXY. 

and war are all denounced, would Christians think that it 
was written by the devil ? 

Did it ever occur to you that if God wrote the Old 
Testament, and told the Jews to crucify or kill anybody 
that disagreed with them on religion, and that this God 
afterwards took upon himself flesh and came to Jerusalem, 
and taught a different religion, and the Jews killed him — 
did it ever occur to you that he reaped exactly what he 
had sown ? Did it ever occur to you that he fell a victim 
to his own tyranny, and was destroyed by his own hand ? 
Of course I do not believe that any God ev er was the 
author of the Bible, or that any God was ever crucified, or 
that any God was ever killed, or ever will be, but I want 
to ask you that question. 

Take this Old Testament, then, with all its stories of 
murder and massacre ; with all its foolish and cruel fables ; 
with all its infamous doctrines; with its spirit of caste; 
with its spirit of hatred, and tell me whether it was written 
by a good God. If you will read the maledictions and 
curses of that book, you will think that God, like Lear, 
had divided heaven among his daughters, and then, in the 
insanity of despair, had launched his curses on the human 
race. 

And yet, I must say — I must admit — that the Old Testa- 
ment is better than the New. In the Old Testament, when 
God had a man dead, he let him alone. When he saw 
him quietly in his grave he was satisfied. The muscles re- 
laxed, and the frown gave place to a smile. But in the 
New Testament the trouble commences at death. In the 
New Testament God is to wreak his revenge forever and 
ever. It was reserved for one who said, " Love your ene- 
mies," to tear asunder the veil between time and eternity 
and fix the horrified gaze of man upon the gulfs of eternal 
fire. The New Testament is just as much worse than the 
Old, as hell is worse than sleep ; just as much worse, as in- 
finite cruelty is worse than dreamless rest ; and yet, the 
New Testament is claimed to be a gospel of love and 
peace. 

Is it possible that : " The Scriptures constitute the authori- 



ORTHODOXY. 25 

tative standard by which religious teaching and human con- 
duct are to be regulated and judged? " 

Are we to judge of conduct by the Old Testament, by the 
New, or by both ? According to the Old, the slaveholder 
was a just and generous man ; a polygamist was a model of 
virtue. According to the New, the worst can be forgiven 
and the best can be lost. How can any book be a standard, 
when the standard itself must be measured by human 
reason ? Is there a standard of a standard ? Must not the 
reason be convinced ? and, if so, is not the reason of each 
man the final arbiter of that man ? If he takes a book as 
a standard, does he so take it because it is to him reason- 
able ? In what way is the human reason to be ignored? 
Why should a book take its place, unless the reason has 
been convinced that the book is the proper standard ? If 
this is so, the book rests upon the reason of those who adopt 
it. Are they to be saved because they act in accordance 
with their reason, and are others to be damned because they 
act by the same standard — their reason ? No two are alike. 
Can we demand of all the same result? Suppose the com- 
passes were not constant to the pole — no two compasses ex- 
actly alike — would you expect all ships to reach the same 
harbor ? 

The Reign of Truth and Love. 

I also find in this creed the following : 

II We believe that Jesus Christ came to establish among 
men the Kingdom of God, the reign of truth and love, of 
righteousness and peace" 

Well, that may have been the object of Jesus Christ. I 
do not deny it. But what was the result ? The Christian 
world has caused more war than all the rest of the world 
beside. Most of the cunning instruments of death have 
been devised by Christians. All the wonderful machinery 
by which the life is blown from men, by which nations are 
conquered and enslaved — all these machines have been 
born in Christian brains. And yet he came to bring peace, 
they say ; but the Testament says otherwise : " I came not 
to bring peace, but a sword." And the sword was brought. 



26 ORTHODOXY. 

What are the Christian nations doing to-day in Europe ? 
Is there a solitary Christian nation that will trust any 
other? How many millions of Christians are in the uni- 
form of forgiveness, armed with the muskets of love? 

There was an old Spaniard on the bed of death, who sent 
for a priest, and the pr ; est told him that he would have to 
forgive his enemies 1 before he died. He said, " I have 
none." "What! no enemies? " "Not one," said the dying 
man; "I killed the last one three months ago." 

How many millions of Christians are now armed and 
equipped to destroy their fellow- Christians ? Who are the 
men in Europe crying against war ? Who wishes to have 
the nations disarmed ? Is it the church ? No ; the men 
who do not believe in what they call this religion of peace. 
When there is a Avar, and when they make a few thousand 
widows and orphans; when they strew the plain with. dead 
patriots, Christians assemble in their churches and sing "Te 
Deum Laudamus." Why ? Because he has enabled a few 
of his children to kill some others of his children. This is 
the religion of peace — the religion that invented the Krupp- 
gun, that will hurl a ball weighing two thousand pounds 
through twenty-four inches of solid steel. This is the re- 
ligion of peace that covers the sea with men-of-war, clad in 
mail, in the name of universal forgiveness. This is the re- 
lio-ion that drills and uniforms five millions of men to kill 
their fellows. 

The Wars it Brought. 

What effect has this religion had upon the nations of the 
earth ? What have the nations been fighting about ? What 
was the Thirty Years' War in Europe for ? What was the 
war in Holland for ? Why was it that England persecuted 
Scotland ? Why is it that England persecutes Ireland even 
to this day ? At the bottom of every one of these conflicts 
you will find a religions question. The religion of Jesus 
Christ, as preached by his church, causes war, bloodshed, 
hatred, and all uncharitableness ; and why ? Because they 
say a certain belief is necessary to salvation. They do not 
say, if you behave yourself you will get there ; they do not 



ORTHODOXY. 27 

say, if you pay your debts and love your wife and love 
your children, and are good to your friends, and your neigh- 
bors, and your country, you will get there ; that will do 
you no good ; you have got to believe a certain thing. No 
matter how bad you are, you can instantly be forgiven ; 
and no matter how good you are, if you fail to believe that 
which you cannot understand, the moment you get to the 
day of judgment nothing is left but to damn you, and all 
the angels will shout "hallelujah." 

What do they teach to-day ? Nearly every murderer goes 
to heaven ; there is only one step from the gallows to God, 
only one jerk between the halter and heaven. That is 
taught by this church. 

I believe there ought to be a law to prevent the giving of 
the slightest religious consolation to any man who has been 
found guilty of murder. Let a Catholic understand that if 
he imbrues his hands in his brother's blood, he can have no 
extreme unction. Let it be understood that he can have no 
forgiveness through the church; and let the Protestant 
understand that when he has committed that crime the com- 
munity will not pray him into heaven. Let him go with his 
victim. The victim, dying in his sins, goes to hell, and the 
murderer has the happiness of seeing him there. If heaven 
grows dull and monotonous, the murderer can again give life 
to the nerve of pleasure by watching the agony of his victim. 

The truth is, Christianity has not made friends ; it has 
made enemies. It is not, as taught, the religion of peace, it 
is the religion of war. Why should a Christian hesitate to 
kill a man that his God is waiting to damn ? Why should 
a Christian not destroy an infidel who is trying to assassinate 
his soul ? Why should a Christian pity an unbeliever — one 
who has rejected the bible — -when he knows that God will 
be pitiless forever ? And yet we are told, in this creed, that 
"we believe in the ultimate prevalence of the Kingdom of 
Christ over all the earth.' 1 ' 1 

What makes you? Do you judge from the manner in which 
you are getting along now ? How many people are being 
born a year ? About fifty millions. How many are you con- 
verting a year, really, truthfully ? Five or six thousand. I 
think I have overstated the number. Is orthodox Chris- 



28 ORTHODOXY. 

tianity on the increase ? No. There are a hundred times as 
many unbelievers in orthodox Christianity as there were ten 
years ago. What are you doing in -the missionary world ? 
How long is it since you converted a Chinaman ? A fine 
missionary religion, to send missionaries with their bibles 
and tracts to China, but if a Chinaman comes here, mob him, 
simply to show him the difference between the practical and 
theoretical workings of the Christian religion. How long 
since you have had an intelligent convert in India ? In my 
judgment, never ; there never has been an intelligent Hindoo 
converted from the time the first missionary put his foot on 
that soil ; and never, in my judgment, has an intelligent China- 
man been converted since the first missionary touched that 
shore. Where are they ? We hear nothing of them, except in 
the reports. They get money from poor old ladies, trembling 
on the edge of the grave, and go and tell them stories, how 
hungry the average Chinaman is for a copy of the New 
Testament, and paint the sad condition of a gentleman in the 
interior of Africa without the works of Dr. McCosh, longing 
for a cop^y of The Princeton Review, — in my judgment, a 
pamphlet that would suit a savage. Thus money is scared 
from the dying and frightened from the old and feeble. 
About how long is it before this kingdom is to be estab- 
lished ? No one objects to the establishment of peace and 
good will. Every good man longs for the time when war 
shall cease. We are all hoping for a day of universal justice 
— a day of universal freedom — when man shall control him- 
self, when the passions shall become obedient to the intelli- 
gent will. But the coming of that day will not be hastened 
by preaching the doctrines of total depravity and eternal re- 
venge. That sun will not rise the quicker for preaching sal- 
vation by faith. The star that shines above that dawn, the 
herald of that day, is Science not superstition, Eeason not 
religion.- 

To show you how little advance has been made, how 
many intellectual bats and mental owls still haunt the temple, 
still roost above the altar, I call your attention to the fact 
that the Congregational Church, according to this creed, 
still believes in the resurrection of the dead, and in their Con- 



ORTHODOXY. 29 

fession of Faith, attached to the Creed, I find that they also 
believe in the literal resurrection of the body. 

The Resurrection. 

Does anybody believe that, who has the courage to think 
for himself? Here is a man, for instance, that weighs 200 
pounds and gets sick and dies weighing 120 ; how much will 
he weigh in the morning of the resurrection ? Here is a canni- 
bal, who eats another man ; and we know that the atoms you 
eat go into your body and become a part of you. After the 
cannibal has eaten the missionary, and appropriated his 
atoms to himself, and then dies, to whom will the atoms be- 
long in the morning of the resurrection ? Could the mis- 
sionary maintain an action of replevin, and if so, what would 
the cannibal do for a body ? It has been demonstrated, in 
so far as logic can demonstrate anything, that there is no 
creation and no destruction in Nature. It has been demon- 
strated, again and again, that the atoms in us have been in 
millions of other beings ; have grown in the forests and in the 
grass, have blossomed in flowers,- and been in the metals. In 
other words, there are atoms in each one of us that have 
been in millions of others; and when we die, these atoms re- 
turn to the earth, again appear in grass and trees, are again 
eaten by animals, and again devoured by countless vegeta- 
ble mouths and turned into wood ; and yet this Church, in 
the nineteenth century, in a council composed of, and pre- 
sided over by, Professors and Presidents of Colleges and 
theologians, solemnly tells us that it believes in the literal 
resurrection of the body. This is almost enough to make 
one despair of the future — almost enough to convince a man 
of the immortality of the absurd. They know better. There 
is not one so ignorant but knows better. ~ 

The Judgment-Day. 

And what is the next thing ? 

" We believe in a final judgment, the issues of which are 
everlasting 'punishment and everlasting life." 

At the final judgment all of us will be there. The thousands, 



30 ORTHODOXY. 

and millions, and billions, and trillions, and quadrillions tli at 
have died will be there. The books will be opened, and 
each case will be called. The sheep and the goats will be 
divided. The unbelievers will be sent to- the left, while the 
faithful will proudly walk to the right. The saved, with- 
out a tear, will bid an eternal farewell to those who loved 
them here — to those they loved. Nearly all the human race 
will go away to everlasting punishment, and the fortunate 
few to eternal life. This is the consolation of the Con- 
gregational Church ! This is the hope that dispels the gloom 
of life! 

Pious Evasions. 

When the clergy are caught, they give a different mean- 
ing to the words and say the world was not made in seven 
days. They say "good whiles" — "epochs." 

And in this same confession of faith and in this creed 
they say that the Lord's day is holy — every seventh day. 
Suppose you lived near the North Pole where the day is 
three months long. Then which day would you keep ? If 
you could get to the North Pole you could prevent Sunday 
from ever overtaking you. You could walk around the 
other way faster than the world could revolve. How would 
you keep Sunday then ? Suppose we invent something that 
can go 1.000 miles an hour? We can chase Sunday clear 
around the globe. Is there anything that can be more per- 
fectly absurd than that a space of time can be holy? You 
might as well talk about a virtuous vacuum. We are now 
told that the bible is not a scientific book, and that after all 
we cannot depend on what God said four thousand years 
ago— tli at his ways are not as our ways — that we must ac- 
cept without evidence, and believe without understanding. 

I heard the other night of an old man. He was not very 
well educated, and he got into the notion that he must have 
reading of the bible and family worship. There was a bad 
boy in the family, and they were reading the bible by course. 
In the fifteenth chapter of Corinthians is this passage: 
" Behold, brethren, I show you a mystery ; we shall not all die, 
but we shall all be changed." This boy had rubbed out the 
„c" in " changed." So when the old man put on his spec- 



ORTHODOXY. 31 

tacles, and got down his Bible, he read : " Behold, breth- 
ren, I show you a mystery, we shall not all die, but we shall 
all be hanged." The old lady said, " Father, I don't think 
it reads that way." He said, " Who is reading this ?" " Yes, 
mother, it says 'hanged,' and, more than that, I see the sense 
of it. Pride is the besetting sin of the human heart, and if 
there is anything calculated to take the pride out of a man 
it is hanging." It is in this way that ministers avoid and 
explain the discoveries of science. 

People ask me, if I take away the bible what are we going 
to do ? How can we get along without the revelation that 
no one understands? What are we going to do if we have 
no bible to quarrel about ? What are we to do without 
hell ? What are we going to do with our enemies? What 
are we going to do with the people we love but don't like ? 

"No Bible, No Civilization." 

They tell me that there never would have been any civ- 
ilization if it had not been for this Bible. The Jews had a 
Bible ; the Eomaus had not. Which had the greater and 
the grander government? Let us be honest. Which of 
those nations produced the greatest poets, the greatest sol- 
diers, the greatest orators, the greatest statesmen, the great- 
est sculptors? Kome had no Bible. God cared nothing for 
the Eoman Empire. He let the men come up by chance. 
His time was taken up with the Jewish people. And yet 
Kome conquered the world, including the chosen people of 
God. The people who had the Bible were defeated by the 
people who had not. How was it possible for Lucretius to 
get along without the Bible? How did the great and glo- 
rious of that empire? And what shall we say of Greece? 
No Bible. Compare Athens with Jerusalem. From Athens 
come the beauty and intellectual grace of the world. Com- 
pare the mythology of Greece with the mythology of Judea ; 
one covering the earth with beauty, and the other filling 
heaven with hatred and injustice. The Hindoos had no 
Bible; they had been forsaken by the Creator, and yet they 
became the greatest metaphysicians of the world. Egypt 
had no Bible. Compare Egypt with Judea. What are we 



32 ORTHODOXY. 

to do without the Bible? What became of the Jews who 
had a Bible? Their temple was destroyed and their city 
was taken ; and they never found real prosperity until their 
God deserted them. The Turks attributed all their victories 
to the Koran. The Koran gave them their victories over 
the believers in the Bible. The priests of each nation have 
accounted for the prosperity of that nation by its religion. 
The Christians mistake an incident for a cause, and honestly 
imagine that the Bible is the foundation of modern liberty 
and law. They forget physical conditions, make no account 
of commerce, care nothing for inventions and discoveries, 
and ignorantly give the credit to their inspired book. 

The foundations of our civilization were laid centuries 
before Christianity was known. The intelligence of courage, 
of self-government, of energy, of industry, that uniting made 
the civilization of this century, did not come alone from 
Judea, but from every nation of the ancient world. 

Miracles of the New Testament. 

There are many things in the New Testament that I can- 
not accept as true. 

I cannot believe in the miraculous origin of Jesus 
Christ. I believe he was the son of Joseph and Mary; 
that Joseph and Mary had been duly and legally married ; 
that he was the legitimate offspring of that union. No- 
body ever believed the contrary until he had been dead 
at least 150 years. Neither Matthew, Mark, nor Luke ever 
dreamed that he was of divine origin. Pie did not say to 
either Matthew, Mark, or Luke, or to any one in their hear- 
ing, that he was the Son of God, or that he was miracu- 
lously conceived. He did not say it. It may be asserted 
that he said it to John, but John did not write the gospel 
that bears his name. The angel Gabriel, who, they say, 
brought the news, never wrote a word upon the subject. 
The mother of Christ never wrote a word upon the subject. 
His alleged father never wrote a word upon the subject, 
and Joseph never admitted the story. We are lacking in 
the matter of witnesses. I would not believe such a story 
now. I cannot believe that it happened then. I would not 



ORTHODOXY. 38 

believe people I know, much less would I believe people 
I do not know. 

At that time Matthew, and Luke believed that Christ 
was the son of Joseph and Mary. And why? They 
say he descended from David, and in order to show that 
he was of the blood of David, they gave the genealogy 
of Joseph. And if Joseph was not his father, why did 
they not give the genealogy of Pontius Pilate or of Herod? 
Conld they, by giving the genealogy of Joseph, show 
that he was of the blood of David if Joseph was in no 
way related to Christ? And yet that is the position into 
which the christian world is driven. In the New Testament 
we find that in giving the genealogy of Christ it says, "who 
was the son of Joseph?" and the church has interpolated 
the words "as was supposed." Why did they give a sup- 
posed genealogy? It will not do. And that is a thing that 
cannot in any way, by any human testimony, be established. 

If it is important for us to know that he was the Son of 
God, I say, then, that it devolves upon God to give us the 
evidence. Let him write it across the face of the heavens, 
in every language of mankind. If it is necessary for us to 
believe it, let it grow on every leaf next year. No man 
should be damned for not believing, unless the evidence is 
overwhelming. And he ought not to be made to depend 
upon say so, or upon "as was supposed." He should have 
it directly, for himself. A man says that God told him a 
certain thing, and he tells me, and I have only his word. 
He may have been deceived. If God has a message for me; 
he ought to tell it to me, and not to somebody that has been 
dead four or five thousand years, and in another language. 

Besides, God may have changed his mind on many things; 
he has on slavery, and polygamy at least, according to the 
church; and yet his church now wants to go and destroy 
polygamy in Utah with the sword. Why do they not send 
missionaries there with copies of the Old Testament? By 
reading the lives of Abraham and Isaac, and Lot, and a few 
other patriarchs who ought to have been in the peniten- 
tiary, maybe they can soften their hearts. 



34 ORTHODOXY. 

More Miracles. 

There is another miracle I do not believe, — the resurrection. 
I want to speak about it as we would about any ordinary trans- 
action. In the first place, I do not believe that any miracle 
was ever performed, and if there was, you cannot prove it. 
Why ? Because it is altogether more reasonable to believe 
that the people were mistaken about it than that it hap- 
pened. And why? Because, according to human experi- 
ence, we know that people will not always tell the truth, 
and we never saw a miracle ourselves, and we must be gov- 
erned by our experience; and if we go by our experience, 
we must say that the miracle never happened — that the 
witnesses were mistaken. 

A man comes into Jerusalem, and the first thing he does is 
to cure the blind. He lets the light of day visit the night 
of blindness. The eyes are opened, and the world is again 
pictured upon the brain. Another man is clothed with 
lepros} r . He touches him and the disease falls from him, 
and he stands pure, and clean, and whole. Another man is 
deformed, wrinkled, and bent. He touches him, and throws 
around him again the garment of youth. A man is in his 
grave, and he says, " Come forth !" And the man walks in 
life, feeling his heart throb and his blood going joyously 
through his veins. They say that actually happened. I do 
not know. 

There is one wonderful thing about the dead people 
that were raised — we do not hear of them any more. 
What became of them ? If there was a man in this city 
who had been raised from the dead, I would go to see him 
to-night. I would say, "Where were you when you got 
the notice to come back? What kind of country is it? 
What kind of opening there for a young man? How did 
you like it? Did you meet there the friends you had lost? 
Is there a world without death, without pain, without a 
tear ? Is there a land without a grave, and where good- 
bye is never heard ?" Nobody ever paid the slightest at- 
tention to the dead who had been raised. They did not 
even excite interest when they died the second time. No- 
body said, " Why, that man is not afraid. He has been 






ORTHODOXY. 85 

there once. He has walked through the valley of the 
shadow." Not a word. They pass quietly away. 

I do not believe these miracles. There is something 
wrong somewhere about that business. I may suffer 
eternal punishment for all this, but I cannot, I do not, be- 
lieve. 

There was a man who did all these things, and there- 
upon they crucified him. Let us be honest. Suppose a 
man came into this city and should meet a funeral pro- 
cession, and say, "Who is dead?" and they should reply, 
"The son of a widow; her only support." Suppose he 
should say to the procession, " Halt 1" and to the under- 
taker, " Take out that coffin, unscrew that lid. Young 
man, I say unto thee, arise !" and the dead should step from 
the coffin and in a moment afterward hold his mother in 
his arms. Suppose this stranger should go to your ceme- 
tery and find some woman holding a little child in each 
hand, while the tears fell upon a neAV-made grave, and he 
should say to her, " Who lies buried here ?." and she should 
reply, " My husband; " and he should cry, " I say unto thee, 
oh grave, give up thy dead! " and the husband should rise, 
and in a moment after have his lips upon his wife's, and the 
little children with their arms around his neck ; do you 
think that the people of this city would kill him ? Do you 
think any one would wish to crucify him ? Do you not 
rather believe that every one who had a loved one out in that 
cemetery would go to him, even upon their knees, and beg him 
to give back their dead? Do you believe that any man 
was ever crucified who was the master of death ? 

Let me tell you to-night if there shall ever ap- 
pear upon this earth the master, the monarch, of 
death, all human knees will touch the earth. He will not 
be crucified. All the living who fear death ; all tiie living 
who have lost a loved one, will bow to him. And yet we 
are told that this worker of miracles, this man who could 
clothe the dead dust in the throbbing flesh of life, was cru- 
cified. I do not believe that he worked the miracles, I do 
not believe that he raised the dead, I do not believe that he 
claimed to be the Son of God. These things were told long 



36 ORTHODOXY. 

after lie was dead ; told because the ignorant multitude 
demanded mystery and wonder ; told, because at that time 
the miraculous was believed of all the illustrious dead. 
Stories that inbade Christianity powerful then, weaken i t 
now^. He who gains a triumph in a conflict with a devil, 
will be defeated by science. 

There is another thing about these foolish miracles. All 
could have been imitated. Men could pretend to be blind; 
confederates could feign sickness, and even death. 

It is not very difficult to limp or to hold an arm as though 
it were paralyzed; or to say that one is afflicted with "an is- 
sue of blood." It is easy to say that the son of a widow was 
raised from the dead, and if you fail to give the name of the 
son, or his mother, or the time and place where the wonder 
occurred, it is quite difficult to show that it did not happen. 

ISTo one can be called upon to disprove anything that has 
not apparently been established. I say apparently, because 
there can be no real evidence in support of a miracle. 

How could we prove, for instance, the miracle of the loaves 
and fishes ? There were plenty of other loaves and other 
fishes in the world. Each one of the five thousand could 
have had a loaf and a fish with him. We would have to 
show that there was no other possible way for the people to 
get the bread and fish except by miracle, and then we are 
only half through. We must then show that they did, in 
fact, get enough to feed five thousand people, and that more 
was left than was had in the beginning. 

Of course this is simply impossible. And let me ask, why 
was not the miracle substantiated by some of the multitude ? 

Would it not have been a greater wonder if Christ had 
created instead of multiplied the loaves and fishes ? 

How can we now prove that a certain person more than 
eighteen hundred years ago was possessed by seven devils? 

Ho w was it ever possible to prove a thing like that ? 

How can it be established that some evil spirits could 
talk while others were dumb, and that the dumb ones were 
the hardest to control ? 

If Christ wished to convince his fellow men by miracles, 
why did he not do something that could not by any means 
have been a counterfeit? 



ORTHODOXY. 37 

Instead of healing a withered arm, why did he not find 
some man whose arm had been cut off, and make another 
grow ? 

If he wanted to raise the dead, why did he not raise some 
man of importance, some one known to all ? 

Why did he do his miracles in the obscurity of the vil- 
lage, in the darkness of the hovel ? 

Why call back to life people so insignificant that the 
public did not know of their death ? 

Suppose that in May, 1865, a man had pretended to raise 
some person by the name of Smith from the dead, and sup- 
pose a religion had been founded on that miracle, would it 
not be natural for people, hundreds of years after the pre- 
tended miracle, to ask why the founder of that religion did 
not raise from the dead Abraham Lincoln, instead of the 
unknown and obscure Mr. Smith ? 

How could any man now, in any court, by any known 
rule of evidence, substantiate one of the miracles of Christ? 

Must we believe anything that cannot in any way be sub- 
stantiated ? 

If miracles were necessary to convince men eighteen cen- 
turies ago, are they not necessary now ? 

After all, how many men # did Christ convince with his 
miracles? How many walked beneath the standard of the 
master of Nature ? 

How did it happen that so many miracles convinced so 
few ? I will tell you. The miracles were never performed. 
No other explanation is possible. 

It is infinitely absurd to say that a man who cured the 
sick, the halt and blind, raised the dead, cast out devils, con- 
trolled the winds and waves, created food and held obedient 
to his will the forces of the world, was put to death by. men 
who knew his superhuman power and who had seen his 
wondrous works. If the crucifixion was public, the mir- 
acles were private. If the miracles had been public, the 
crucifixion could not have been. Do away with the 
miracles, and the superhuman character of Christ is de- 
stroyed. He becomes what he really was — a man. Do 
away with the wonders, and the teachings of Christ cease 
to be authoritative. They are then worth the reason, 



38 ORTHODOXY. 

the truth that is in them, and nothing more. Do away 
with the miracles, and then we can measure the utter- 
ances of Christ with the standard of our reason. We are no 
longer intellectual serfs, believing what is unreasonable in 
obedience to the command of a suppose^ god. We no longer 
take counsel of our fears, of our cowardice, but boldly defend 
what our reason maintains. 

Christ takes his appropriate place with the other teachers 
of mankind. His life becomes reasonable and admirable. 
We have a man who hated oppression; who despised and de- 
nounced superstition and hypocrisy ; who attacked the heart- 
less church of his time: who excited the hatred of bigots 
and priests, and who rather than be false to his conception 
of truth, met and bravely suffered even death. 

The Resurrection. 

The miracle of the resurrection I do not and cannot be- 
lieve. If it was the fact, if the dead Christ rose from the 
grave, why did he not appear to his enemies ? Why did he 
not visit Pontius Pilate? Why did' he not call upon 
Caiaphas, the high priest ? upon Herod? Why did he not 
again enter the temple and end the old dispute with demon- 
stration ? Why did he not confront the Koman solpliers 
who had taken money to falsely swear that his body had 
been stolen by his friends ? Why did he not make another 
triumphal entry into Jerusalem? Why did he not say to 
the multitude : "Here are the wounds in my feet, and in 
my hands, and in my side. I am the one you endeavored 
to kill, but Death is my slave?" Simply because the resur- 
rection is a myth. It makes no difference with his teach- 
ings. They are just as good whether he wrought miracles 
or not. Twice two are four ; that needs no miracle. Twice 
two are five — a miracle can not help that. Christ's teach- 
ings are worth their effect upon the human race. It makes 
no difference about miracle or wonder. In that day every 
one believed in the impossible. Nobody had any standing 
as teacher, philosopher, governor, king, general, about 
whom there was not supposed to be something miraculous. 
The earth was covered with the sons and daughters of gods 
and goddesses. 



ORTHODOXY. 39 

In Greece, in Kome, in Egypt, in India, every great man 
was supposed to have had either a god for his father, or a 
goddess for his mother. They accounted for genius by divine 
origin. Earth and heaven were at that time near together. 
It was but a step for the gods from the blue arch to the 
green earth. Every lake and valley and mountain top was 
made rich with legends of the loves of gods. How could 
the early Christians have made converts to a man, among 
a people whcrbelieved so thoroughly in gods — in gods that 
had lived upon the earth ; among a people who had erected 
temples to the sons and daughters of gods? Such people 
could not have been induced to worship a man — a man born 
among barbarous people, citizen of a nation weak and poor 
and paying tribute to the Koman power. The early chris- 
tians therefore preached the gospel of a god. 

The Ascension. 

I cannot believe in the miracle of the ascension, in the 
bodily ascension of Jesus Christ. Where was he going? In 
the light shed upon this question by the telescope, I again 
ask, where was he going? The New Jerusalem is not above 
us. The abode of the gods is not there. Where was he 
going? Which way did he go? Of course, that depends upon 
the time of day he left. If he left in the evening, he went 
exactly the opposite way from that he would have gone had 
he ascended in the morning. What did he do with his body? 
How high did he go? In what way did he overcome the 
intense cold? The nearest station is the moon, two hundred 
and forty thousand miles away. Again I ask, where did 
he go? He must have had a natural body, for it was the 
same body that died. His body must have been material, 
otherwise, he would not as he rose have circled with the 
earth, and he would have passed from the sight of his dis- 
ciples at the rate of more than a thousand miles per hour. 

It may be said that his body was "spiritual." Then what 
became of the body that died? Just before his ascension 
we are told that he partook of broiled fish with his dis- 
ciples. Was the fish " spiritual ? " 

Who saw this miracle ? 



40 ORTHODOXY. 

They say the disciples saw it. Let us see what they say. 
Matthew did not think it was worth mentioning. He does not 
speak of it. On the contrary, he says that the last words of 
Christ were : " Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end 
of the world." Is it possible that Matthew sa\\ r this, the 
most miraculous of miracles, and yet forgot to put it in his 
life of Christ? Think of the little miracles recorded by this 
Saint, and then determine Avhether it is probable that he 
witnessed the ascension of Jesus Christ. 

Mark, says: "So, then, after the Lord had spoken unto 
them he was received up into Heaven and sat on the right 
hand of Grod." This is all he says about the most wonderful 
vision that ever astonished human eyes, a miracle great 
enough to have stuffed credulity to bursting ; and yet all we 
have is this one, poor, meagre verse. We know, now, that 
most of the last chapter of Mark is an interpolation, and as 
a matter of fact, the author of Mark's gospel said nothing 
about the ascension one way or the other. 

Luke says : " And it came to pass while he blessed them 
he was parted from them and was carried up into Heaven." 

John does not mention it. He gives as Christ's last words 
this address to Peter : " Follow thou Me." Of course he did 
not say that as he ascended. It seems to have made very 
little impression upon him; he writes the account as though 
tired of the story. He concludes with an impatient wave of 
the hand. 

In the Acts we have another account. A conversation is 
given not spoken of in any of the others, and we find there 
two men clad in white apparel, who said: "Ye men of 
Galilee why stand ye here gazing up into heaven? This 
same Jesus that was taken up into heaven shall so come in 
like manner as ye have seen him go up into heaven." 

Matthew did not see the men in white apparel, did not see 
the ascension. Mark forgot the entire transaction, and Luke 
did not think the men in white apparel worth mentioning. 
John had not confidence enoagh in the story to repeat it. 
And yet, upon such evidence, we are bound to believe in the 
bodily ascension, or suffer eternal pain. 

And here let me ask, why was not the ascension in public? 



ORTHODOXY. 4:1 

Casting out Devils. 

Most of the miracles said to have been wrought by Christ 
were recorded to show his power over evil spirits. On many 
occasions, he is said to have "cast out devils" — devils who 
could speak, and devils who were dumb. 

For many years belief in the existence of evil spirits has 
been fading from the mind, and as this belief grew thin, 
ministers endeavored to give new meanings to the ancient 
words. They are inclined now to put " disease " in the place 
of " devils," and most of them say, that the poor wretches 
supposed to have been the homes of fiends, were simply suf- 
fering from epileptic fits! We must remember that Christ 
and these devils often conversed together. Is it possible that 
fits can talk? These devils often admitted that Christ was 
God. Can epilepsy certify to divinity? On one occasion 
the fits told their name, and made a contract to leave the 
body of a man provided they would be permitted to take 
possession of a herd of swine. Is it possible that fits carried 
Christ himself to the pinnacle of a temple? Did fits pretend 
to be the owner of the whole earth? Is Christ to be praised 
for resisting such a temptation? Is it conceivable that fits 
wanted Christ to fall down and worship them? 

The Church must not abandon its belief in devils. Or- 
thodoxy cannot afford to put out the fires of hell. Throw 
away a belief in the devil, and most of the miracles of the 
new Testament become impossible, even if we admit the 
supernatural. If there is no devil, who was the original 
tempter in the garden of Eden? If there is no hell, from what 
are we saved ; to what purpose is the atonement? Upon the 
obverse of the christian shield is God, upon the reverse, the 
devil. No devil, no hell. No hell, no atonement. ISTo 
atonement, no preaching, no gospel. 

Necessity of Belief. 

Does belief depend upon evidence? I think it does some- 
what in some cases. How is it when a jury is sworn to try 
a case, hearing all the evidence, hearing both sides, hearing 
the charge of the Judge, hearing the law, are upon their 
oaths equally divided, six for the plaintiff' and six for the 



42 ORTHODOXY. 

defendant? Evidence does not have the same effect upon all 
people. Why? Our brains are not alike. They are not 
the tame shape. "We have not the same intelligence, or the 
same experience, the same sense. And yet I am held ac- 
countable for my belief. I must believe in the Trinity — 
three times one is one, once one is three, and my soul is to 
be eternally damned for failing to guess an arithmetical co- 
nundrum. That is the poison part of Christianity — that 
salvation depends upon belief. That is the accursed part, 
and until that dogma is discarded Christianity will be noth- 
ing but superstition. 

No man can control his belief. If I hear certainevidence 
I will believe a certain thing. If I fail to hear it I may 
never believe it. If it is adapted to my mind I may accept 
it ; if it is not, I reject it. And what am I to go by? My 
brain. That is the only light I have from Nature, and if 
there be a God it is the only torch that this God has given 
me to find my way through the darkness and night called 
life. I do not depend upon hearsay for that. I do not have to 
take the word of any other man nor get upon my knees 
before a book. Here in the temple of the mind I consult 
the God, that is to say my reason, and the oracle speaks 
to me and I obey the oracle. What should I obey ? 
Another man's oracle ? Shall I take another man's 
word — not what he thinks, but what he says some God 
has said to him ? • 

I would not know a god if I should see one. I have 
said before, and I say again, the brain thinks in spite of 
me, and lam not responsible for my thoughts. I cannot 
control the beating of my heart. I cannot stop the 
blood that flows through the rivers of my veins. And 
yet I am held responsible for my belief. Then why does 
not God give me the evidence ? They say he has. 
In what ? In an inspired book. But I do not under- 
stand it as they do. Must I be false to my understand- 
ing ? They say: " When you come to die you will be 
sorry if you do not." Will I be sorry when I come to 
die that I did not live a hypocrite ? Will I be sorry that 
I did not say I was a Christian when I was not ? Will 



ORTHODOXY. 43 

the fact that I was honest put a thorn in the pillow of 
death ? Crnn )t God forgive me for being honest? They 
say that when he was in Jerusalem he forgave his mur- 
derers, but now he will not forgive an honest man for 
differing from him on the subject of the Trinity. 

They say that God says to me, " Forgive your enemies," 
I say, " I do;" but he says, "I will damn mine." God 
should be consistent. If he wants me to forgive my ene- 
mies he should forgive his. I am asked to forgive ene- 
mies who can hurt me. God is only asked to forgive 
enemies who cannot hurt him. He certainly ought to 
be as generous as he asks us to be. And I want no God 
to forgive me unless I am willing to forgive others, and 
unless I do forgive others. All I ask, if that be true, is 
that this God should act according to his own doctrine. 
If I am to forgive my enemies, I ask him to forgive his, 
I do not believe in the religion of faith, but of kindness^ 
of good deeds. The idea that man is responsible for his 
belief is at the bottom of religious intolerance and perse- 
cution. 

How inconsistent these Christians are! In St. Louis 
the other day I read an interview with a Christian min- 
ister — one who is now holding a revival. They call him 
the boy preacher — a name that he has borne for fifty 
or sixty years. The question was whether in these re- 
vivals, when they were trying to rescue souls from eter- 
nal torture, they would allow colored people to occupy 
seats with white people ; and that revivalist, preaching 
the unsearchable riches of Christ, said he would not 
allow the colored people to sit with white people; they 
must go to the back of the church. These same Chris- 
tians tell us that in heaven there will be no distinction. 
That Christ cares nothing for the color of the skin. That 
in Paradise white and black will sit together, swap harps, 
and cry hallelujah in chorus; yet this minister, believing 
as he says he does, that all men who fail to believe in 
the Lord Jesus Christ will eternally perish, was not 
willing that a colored man should sit by a white man 
and hear the gospel of everlasting peace. 



44 ORTHODOXY. 

According to this revivalist, the ship of the world is 
going down; Christ is the only life-boat; and yet he is 
not willing that a colored man, with a soul to save, shall 
sit by the side of a white brother, and be rescued from 
eternal death. He admits that the white brother is to- 
tally depraved; that if the white brother had justice 
done him he would be damned; that it is only through 
the wonderful mercy of God that the white man is not 
in hell; and yet such a being, totally depraved, is too 
good to sit by a colored man! Total depravity becomes 
arrogant; total depravity draws the color line in religion, 
and an ambassador of Christ says to the black man, 
"Stand away; let your white brother hear first about 
the love of God." 

I believe in the religion of humanity. It is far better 
to love our fellow men than to love God. We can help 
them. We cannot help him. We had better do what we 
can than to be always pretending to do what we cannot. 

Virtue is of no color; kindness, justice and love, of no 
complexion. 

Eternal Punishment. 

'Now I come to the last part of this creed — the doc- 
trine of eternal punishment. I have concluded that I 
will never deliver a lecture in which I will not attack 
the doctrine of eternal pain. That part of the Congre- 
gational creed would disgrace the lowest savage that 
crouches and crawls in the jungles of Africa. The man 
who now, in the nineteenth century, preaches the doc- 
trine of eternal punishment, the doctrine of an eternal 
hell, has lived in vain. Think of that doctrine! The 
eternity of punishment I I find in this same creed — in 
this latest utterance of Congregationalism — that Christ 
is finally going to triumph in this world and establish 
his kingdom. This creed declares that "we believe in the 
ultimate prevalence of the kingdom of God over all the 
earth." If their doctrine is true he will never triumph 
in the other world. The Congregational church does 
not believe in the ultimate prevalence of the kingdom of 



ORTHODOXY. 45 

Christ in the world to come. There, he is to meet with, 
eternal failure, lie will have billions in hell forever. 
In this world we never will be perfectly civilized as long 
as a gallows casts its shadow upon the earth. As long 
as there is a penitentiary, within the w^alls of wdiich a 
human being is immured, we are not aperfectly civilized 
people. We will never be perfectly civilized until 
we do away with crime. And yet, according to 
this Christian religion, God is to have an eternal 
penitentiary; He is to be an everlasting jailor, an ever- 
lasting turnkey, a warden of an infinite dungeon, and he 
is going to keep prisoners there forever, not for the pur- 
pose of reforming them — because they are never going to 
get any better, only worse — hut for the purpose of pur- 
poseless punishment. And for what? For something 
they failed to believe in this world. Born in ignorance, 
supported by poverty, caught in the snares of temptation, 
deformed by toil, stupefied by want- — and yet held re- 
sponsible through the countless ages of eternity! No 
man can think of a greater horror; no man can dream 
of a greater absurdity. For the growth of that doctrine 
ignorance was soil and fear was rain. It came from the 
fanged mouths of serpents, and yet it is called "glad 
tidings of great joy." 

Some who are Damned. 

We are told " God so loved the world " that he is go- 
ing to damn almost everybody. If this orthodox reli- 
gion be true, some of the greatest, and grandest, and best 
who ever lived are suffering God's torments to-night. It 
does not appear to make much difference with the mem- 
bers of the church. They go right on enjoying them- 
selves about as well as ever. If this doctrine is true, 
Benjamin Franklin, one of the wisest and best of men, 
who did so much to give us here a free government, is 
suffering the tyranny of God to-night, although he en- 
deavored to establish freedom among men. If the 
churches were honest, their preachers would tell their 
hearers: "Benjamin Franklin is in hell, and we warn all 



16 ORTHODOXY. 

the youth not to imitate Benjamin Franklin. Thomas 
Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, 
with its self-evident truths, has been damned these many 
years." That is what all the ministers ought to have the 
courage to say. Talk as you believe. Stand by your 
creed, or change it. I want to impress it upon your minds, 
because the thing I wish to do in this world is to put ou£ 
the tires of hell. I will keep on as long as there is one 
little red coal left in the bottomless pit. As long as the 
ashes are warm I shall denounce this infamous do ctrine . 

I want you to know that according to this creed the men 
who founded this- great and splendid Government are 
in hell to-night. Most of the men who fought in the Rev- 
olutionary War, and wrested from the clutch of Great 
Britain this continent, have been rewarded by the eter- 
nal wrath of God. Thousands of the old Revolutionary 
soldiers are in torment to-night. Let the preachers 
have the courage to say so. The men who fought in 
1812, and gave to the United States the freedom of the 
seas, have nearly all been damned. Thousands of heroes 
who served our country in the civil war, hundreds who 
starved in prisons, are now in the dungeons of God, com- 
pared with which, Anderson ville was Paradise! The 
greatest of heroes are there ; the greatest of poets, the 
greatest scientists, the men who have made the world 
beautiful — they are all among the damned ^f_this creed is 
.true*^ 

Humboldt, who shed light, and who added to the 
intellectual wealth of mankind; Goethe, and Schiller, 
and Lessing, who almost created the German language 
■ — all gone — all suffering the wrath of God to-night, 
and every time an angel thinks of one of those men 
he gives his harp an extra twang. La Place, who 
read the heavens like an open book — he is there. Robert 
Burns, the poet of human love — he is there. He wrote 
the "Prayer of Holy Willie." He fastened on the cross 
the Presbyterian creed, and there it is, a lingering cruci- 
fixion. Robert Burns increased the tenderness of the 
human heart. Dickens put a shield, of pity before the 



ORTHODOXY. 47 

flesh of childhood — God is getting even with him. Our 
own Ralph Waldo Emerson, although he had a thousand 
opportunities to hear Methodist clergymen, scorned the 
means of grace, lived to his highest" ideal, gave to his 
fellow men his best and truest thought, and yet his spirit 
is the sport and prey of fiends to-night. 

Longfellow who has refined thousands of homes, did not 
believe in the miraculous origin of the Savior, doubted 
the report of Gabriel, loved his fellow-men, did what he 
could to free the slaves, to increase the happiness of man, 
yet God was waiting for his soul— waiting to cast him. 
out and down forever. Thomas Paine, "author of the 
" Eights of Man;" offering his life in both hemispheres 
for the freedom of the human race; one of the founders 
of this Republic, is now among the damned; and yet it 
seems to me that if he could only get God's attention 
long enough to point him to the American flag he would 
let him out. August Comte, author of the " Positive Phi- 
losophy," who loved his fellow-men to that degree that 
he made of humanity a god, who wrote his great work 
m poverty, with his face covered with tears— they are 
getting their revenge on him now. 

Voltaire, who abolished torture in France; who did 
more for human liberty than any other man, livino- r 
dead; who was the assassin of superstition, and whose 
dagger still rusts m the heart of Catholicism— he is 
with the rest. All the priests who have been translated 
have had their happiness increased by looking at Vol- 
taire. to 

Giordano Bruno, the first star of the morning after 
the long night; Benedict Spinoza, the pantheist, the 
metaphysician, the pure and generous man- Diderot 
the encyclopedist, who endeavored to get all knowl- 
edge m a small compass, so that he could put the peasant 
on an equality intellectually with the prince; Diderot 
who wished to sow all over the world the seeds of knowl- 
edge, and loved to labor for mankind, while the priests 
wanted to burn; who did all he could to put out the 
hres— he was lost, long, long ago. His cry for water has 



48 ORTHODOXY. 

become so common that his voice is now recognized 
through all the realms of Heaven, and the angels laugh- 
ing, say to one another, " That is Diderot." 

David Hume, the Scotch philosopher, is there, with 
his inquiry about the "Human Understanding" and his ar- 
gument against miracles. Beethoven, master of music, 
and Wagner, the Shakespeare of harmony, who made 
the air of this world rich forever, they are there ; and to- 
night they have better music in hell than in Heaven! 
Shelley, whose soul,like his own "Skylark," was a winged 
joy, has been damned for many, many years; and Shakes- 
peare, the greatest of the human race, who did more to 
elevate mankind than all the priests who ever lived and 
died, he is there; but founders of inicmisitions, builders 
of dungeons, makers of chains, inventors of instruments 
of torture, tearers, and burners, and branders of human 
flesh, stealers of babes, and sellers of husbands and wives 
and children, and they who kept the horizon lurid with 
the fagot's flame for a thousand years — are in Heaven to- 
night. I wish Heaven joy! 

That is the doctrine with which We are pollut ing the 
souls of children. That is the doctrine that puts a liend 
by the dying bed and a prophecy of hell over every cradle. 
That is a glad tidings of great joy." 

Only a little while ago, when the great flood came up- 
on the Ohio, sent by him who is ruling the world 
and paying particular attention to the affairs of nations, 
just in the gray of the morning they saw a house float- 
ing down and on its top a human being. A few men went 
out to the rescue. They found there a woman, a mother, 
and they wished to save her life. She said: "No, I am 
going to stay where I am. In this house, I have three 
dead babes; I will not desert them." Think of a love so 
limitless — stronger and deeper than despair and death! 
And yet, the Christian religion says, that if that woman, 
that mother, did not happen to believe in their creed 
God would send her soul to eternal tire ! If there is another 
world, and if in heaven they wear hats, when such a 
woman climbs the opposite bank of the Jordan, Christ 
should lift his to her. 



ORTHODOXY. 49 

The doctrine of eternal pain is my troubles with this 
Christian religion. I reject it on account of its in finite 
heartlcssness. I cannot tell them too often, that during 
our last war Christians, who knew that if they were 
shot they would go right to Heaven, went and hired 
wicked men to take their places, perfectly willing that 
these men should go to hell provided they could stay at 
home. Yon see they are not honest in it, or they do not 
believe it, or as the people say, "they don't sense it," 
They have not imagination enough to conceive what it 
is they believe, and what a terrific falsehood they assert. 
And I beg of every one who hears me to-night, I beg, I 
implore, I beseech you, never to give another dollar to 
build a church in which that lie is preached. Never 
give another cent to send a missionary with his month 
stuffed with that falsehood to a foreign land. Why, they 
say, the heathen will go to Heaven, any way, if you let 
them alone. What is the use of sending them to hell by 
enlightening them? Let them alone. The idea of going 
and telling a man a thing that if he does not believe, he 
will be damned, when the chances are ten to one that 
he will not believe it, is monstrous. Do not tell him here, 
and as quick as he gets to the other world and finds it is 
necessary to believe, he can say "Yes." Give him a 
chance. 

Another Objection. 

My objection to orthodox religion is that it destroys hu- 
man love, and tells us that the love of this world is 
not necessary to make a heaven in the next. 

No matter about your wife, your children, your brother, 
your sister — no matter about all the affections of the hu- 
man heart — when you get there, you will be with the an- 
gels. I do not know whether I would like the angels. I 
do not know whether the angels would like me. I would 
rather stand by the ones who have loved me and whom I 
know; and T can conceive of no Heaven without the loved 
of this earth. That is the trouble with this Christian re- 
ligion. Leave your father, leave your mother, leave your 
4 



50 ORTHODOXY. 

wife, leave your children, leave everything and follow 
Jesus Christ. I will not. I will stay with my people. 
I will not sacrifice on the altar of a selfish fear all the 
grandest and noblest promptings of my heart. 

Do away with human love, and what are we ? What 
would we be in another world, and what would we be 
here ? Can any one conceive of music without human 
love ? Of art, or joy ? Human love builds every home. 
Human love is the author of all beauty. Love paints every 
picture, and chisels every statue. Love builds every fire- 
side. What could Heaven be without human love? And 
yet that is what we are promised — a Heaven with your 
wife lost, your mother lost, some of your children gone. 
And you expect to be made happy by falling in with 
some angel! Such a religion is infamous. 

And how are you to get to this heaven ? On the ef- 
forts of another. You are to be a perpetual heavenly 
pauper, and you will have to admit through all eternity 
that you never would have been there if you had not been 
frightened. tC I am here," you will say, *'I have these 
wings, I have this musical instrument, because I was 
scared. I am here. The ones who loved me are among 
the damned; the ones I loved are also there — but' I am 
here, that is enough." 

What a glorious world Heaven must be! No reforma- 
tion in that world — not the slightest. If you die in 
Arkansas that is the end of you! Think of telling a boy 
in the next world, who lived and died in Delaware, that 
he had been fairly treated! Can anything be more 
infamous? 

All on an equality — the rich and the poor, those with 
parents loving them, those with every opportunity for 
education, on an equality with the poor, the abject and 
the ignorant — and this little day called life, this moment, 
with a hope, a shadow and a tear, this little space be- 
tween your mother's arms and the grave, balances eter- 
nity. 

God can do nothing for you when you get there. A 
Methodist preacher can do more for the soul here than its 



ORTHODOXY. 51 

creator can there. The soul goes to Heaven, where there 
is nothing but good society; no bad examples; and they 
are all there, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and yet they 
can do nothing for that poor unfortunate except to damn 
him. Is there any sense in that? 

Why should this be a period of probation? It says in 
the Bible, I believe, "Now is the accepted time." When 
does that mean? That means whenever the passage is 
pronounced. "Now is the accepted time." It will be the 
same to-morrow, will it not? And just as appropriate 
then as to-day, and if appropriate at any time, appropriate 
through all eternity. 

What I sa\^ is this: There is no world — there can be 
no world — in which every human being will not have 
the eternal opportunity of doing right. 

That is my objection to this Christian religion ; and if the 
love of earth is not the love of Heaven, if those we love 
here are to be separated from us there, then I want eter- 
nal sleep. Give me a good cool grave rather than the fur- 
nace of Jehovah's wrath. I pray the angel of the resur- 
rection to let me sleep. Gabriel, do not blow! Let me 
alone! If, when the grave bursts, I am not to meet the 
faces that have been my sunshine in this life, let me sleep. 
Rather than that this doctrine of endless punishment 
should be true, I would gladly see the fabric of our civiliza- 
tion crumbling fall to unmeaning chaos and to formless 
dust, where oblivion broods and even memory forgets. I 
would rather that the Samson of some imprisoned force, 
released by chance, should so wreck and strand the 
mighty world that man in stress and strain of want and 
fear should shudderingly crawl back to savage and bar- 
baric night. I would rather that every planet would in 
its orbit wheel a barren star! 

What I Believe. 

I think it is better to love your children than to love 
God, a thousand times better, because you can help them, 
and I am inclined to think that God can get along with- 
out you. Certainly we cannot help a 1 >eing without 'body, 
parts, or passions! 



52 ORTHODOXY. 

I believe in the religion of the family. I believe that 
the roof tree is sacred, from the smallest fibre held in the 
soft moist clasp of the earth, to the smallest blossom on the 
topmost bough that gives its fragrance to the happy air. 
The family where virtue dwells with love is like a lily 
with a heart of fire — the fairest flower in all this world. 
And I tell you God cannot afford to damn a man in the 
next world who has made a happy family in this. God 
cannot afford to cast over the battlements of Heaven the 
man who has a happy home upon this earth. God 
cannot afford to be unpitying to a human heart capable 
of pity. God cannot clothe with fire the man who has 
clothed the naked here; and God cannot send to eternal 
pain a man who has done something towards improving 
the condition of his fellow-man. If he can, I had rather 
go to hell than to heaven and keep the company of such 
a god. 

Immortality. 

They tell me that the next terrible thing I do is to 
take away the hope of immortality! I do not, I would 
not, I could not. Immortality was first dreamed of by 
human love; and yet the church is going to take human 
love out of immortality. We love, therefore we wish to 
live. A loved one dies and we wish to meet again; and 
from the affection of the human heart s;rew the oreat 
oak of the hope of immortality. Around that oak has 
climbed the poisonous vines of superstition. Theologians, 
pretenders, soothsayers, parsons, priests, popes, bishops, 
have taken advantage of that. They have stood by 
graves and promised Heaven. They have stood by 
graves and prophesied a future filled with pain. They 
have erected their toll-gates on the highway of life and 
have collected money from fear. 

Xeither the Bible nor the Church gave us the idea of 
immortality. The Old Testament tells us how we 
lost immortality, and it does not say a word about an- 
other world, from the first mistake in Genesis to the last 
curse in Malachi. There is not in the Old Testament a 
burial service. 



ORTHODOXY. 53 

No man in the Old Testament stands by the dead and 
says, " We will meet again." From the top of Sinai 
came no hope of another world. 

And when we get to the New Testament, what do we 
find? a They that are accounted worthy to obtain that 
world and the resurrection of the dead." As though 
some would be counted unworthy to obtain the resurrec- 
tion of the dead. And in another place: " Seek for 
honor, glory, immortality." If you have it, why seek it? 
And in another place, "God, who alone hath immortality." 
Yet they tell us that we get our idea of immortality 
from the Bible. I deny it. 

I would not destroy the faintest ray of human hope, 
but I deny that we got our idea of immortality from the 
Bible. It existed long before Moses. We find it sym- 
bolized through all Egypt, through all India. Wherever 
man has lived he has made another world in which to 
meet the lost of this. 

The history of this belief we find in tombs and temples 
wrought and carved by those who wept and hoped. Above 
their dead they laid the symbols of another life. 

We do not know. We do not prophecy a life of pain. 
We leave the dead with Nature, the mother of us all. 
Under the bow of hope, under the seven-hued arch, let 
the dead sleep. 

If Christ was in fact God, why did he not plainly say 
there is another life ? Why did he not tell us something 
about it ? Why did he not turn the tear-stained hope 
of immortality into the glad knowledge of another life ? 
Why did he go dumbly to his death and leave the world, 
in darkness and in doubt ? "Why ? Because he was a 
man and did not know. 

What consolation has the orthodox religion for the 
widow of the unbeliever, the widow of a good, brave, 
kind man ? What can the orthodox minister say to re- 
lieve the bursting heart of that woman ? What can he 
say to relieve the aching hearts of the orphans as they 
kneel by the grave of that father, if that father did not 
happen to be an orthodox Christian ? What consolation 



54 ORTHODOXY. 

have they ? When a Christian loses a friend the tears 
spring from his eyes as quickly as from the eyes of others. 
Their tears are as bitter as ours. Why ? The echoes of 
the words spoken eighteen hundred years ago are so 
low, and the sounds of the clods upon the coffin are so 
loud ; the promises are so far away, and the dead are so 
near. 

We do not know, we cannot say, whether death is a 
wall or a door; the beginning or end of a day ; the spread- 
ing of pinions to soar, or the folding forever of wings; 
the rise or the set of a sun, or an endless life that brings 
rapture and love to every one. 

A Fable. 

There is the fable of Orpheus and Eurydice. Eury- 
dice had been captured and taken to the infernal regions, 
and Orpheus went after her, taking with him his harp 
and playing as he went. When he came to Pluto's realm 
he began to play, and Sysiphus, charmed by the music, sat 
doAvn upon the stone that he had been heaving up the side 
of the mountain for so many years, and which continually 
rolled back upon him; Ixion paused upon his wheel of fire; 
Tantalus ceased his vain efforts for water; the daughters 
of the Danaides left off trying to fill their seives with 
water; Pluto smiled, and for the first time in the history 
of hell the cheeks of the Furies were wet with tears. 
The god relented, and said, u Eurydice may go with 
you, but you' must not look back." So Orpheus again 
threaded the caverns, playing as he went, and as he 
reached the light he failed to hear the footsteps of Eury- 
dice. He looked back, and in a moment she was gone. 
Again and again Orpheus sought his love. Again and 
again looked back. 

This fable gives the idea of the perpetual effort made 
by the human mind to rescue truth from the clutch 
of error. 

Some time Orpheus will not look back. Some day 
Eurydice will reach the blessed light, and at last there 
will fade from the memory of men the monsters of su- 
perstition. 



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